Feedback Provided to a Customer Service Team Plebeian of a Major Australian Supermarket by the Pioneering Philanthropist, Mr. E.B. Fuckwad III, Esq.

How the fuck may I help you today?

Q: You indicated that you were unhappy with the self-checkout experience. Please let us know exactly what the problem was.

A: Oh, look mate, what I am unhappy with is the very concept of self-checkouts.

Now, I'm sure you have some public relations line about my convenience and my comfort and my freedom, and my choices and my democracy and ALL THE SAVINGS PASSED ON TO YOU MATE!

So let's assume that you've already handed me that line, and I've nodded my head along already and gone "yes," and "yes," and "yes," and "oh, yeah, totally. I'm sorry. It's fine," and I've not been rude about it because you're just a person and you don't make the rules but you have a job to do hey.

Let's get past that. I understand. After all, my great uncle, the Twelfth Lord of Fuckwad, was just doing his job too when he sold all that specially-patented nerve gas to The Bosch!

You just could not say no to that 'stache!

Max lulz they were, back in '14, but times have changed, baby, and you're lucky I'm the Gen Y, Bransonesque Young Fuckwad of Fuckwad Hall.

For now though we are down at the pub where you're in the process of getting plastered and admitting to me that you hate your job, you hate the company and you hate the rut you're stuck in. 

And now that we're down to brass tacks, we both know that the real issue here is that you're working for one half of a corporate duopoly who are holding Australia's food supply to ransom - that is, when they're not shutting down our pubs and turning them into bulk liquor warehouses.

Never mind the customer, yo' company's sole moral imperative is the quarterly increase of sharemarket value, and blah blah blah as previously discussed on Australia's famous Boom Town Rocks blog.

WA Young Liberals' dickbag Theopolis Thornton's 2011 UWA thesis
Serfdom Revisited: The Importance of Fiscal Inequity in
Maintaining Dominance over the Lower Orders of Man
was a seminal inspiration.

In pursuit of this, some 20-year-old, paid-up-front, Curtin University commerce graduate joker has dedicated his honours year to the production of a verbose and Machiavellian cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates the net profit created through swift and immediate investment in the manufacture and implementation and maintenance of these newfangled machines...

These machines would now save shareholders precious coinage: The most important thing in the world.

Precious, precious coinage that would have otherwise been spent providing stable, full-time employment to the two dozen staff per store that you've just retrenched nationwide.

So in order to save yourselves some quid (you're the company now fella, patience running out) I HAVE TO DO THE FUCKING WORK INSTEAD - as if I didn't hate the shops enough already - meanwhile the right of local, slackjawed Year 10 Dropouts to go "How's ya father?" while old people fumble about with their pension money, has been severely curtailed.

This ain't in the community's interest at all mate.

FUCK OFF.

But I'm rich, I'm hip, and I'm a man of charity, so I tell you what I'm gonna do.

Thanks to the classic British scholarship of my dutifully loyal, well-paid assistant Clarice, I have here in my lemon-scented hands a carefully-maintained logbook detailing every minute of the previous two financial years that I have spent,  personally sorting my own shit out at your cash registers, because you want to save some fucking money on staff.

Well, I'll actually save you some money, because I'm not particularly efficient at grocery bag packing, so I'm happy to only invoice you for the minimum retail award rate for this labour which I have nonetheless dutifully performed on your behalf. I am happy to waive leave and other entitlements too, 'cause I'm your buddy, mate, how's your pint?

So, please see attached for my invoice, and be advised that I will be employing Egyptian mercenaries to follow up personally with your Chief Executive Officer if the bill is not sorted within 14 days.

Remember, kid, shit flows downhill, and these men have a fondness for crippling call centre operators. Just putting that out there. But I do apologise for the urgency fella. Business is business, you know?

Sorrrrry about that !

Oh… and, back to the pub. ... that nervousness you feel? Probably exacerbated by the liquid LSD in your beer. Yep, just before. Did you not taste it? Lol, no, it wasn't me. I don't do that sort of thing. But I did see it - yes! - and I might have even arranged it - and how! But if you look at your phone there, fella, I've just dialled your boss, actually. It's on speakerphone. Shit's about to get real.

And so I really must dash, but have a wonderful day. And don't worry about the tipple. I'll pick up the tab - lol

Yours sincerely,

Eric Bloomfield Fuckwad III, Esq.

of the Moral Order of the Wedding Night Garter;

Dated this 15th day of January 2013;
Fuckwad Hall at Ecgzford, Herefordshire, Berks.

The Real Douchebag: Why we shouldn't humour Bob Katter

He's been around for wayyy longer than many people realise, his head is too large for his body, his hat is essential to daily life, and it doesn't take a genius to work out that he must drink enough liquor every night to knock out an eight-metre saltwater crocodile.

He's also been part of the music scene on at least two non-consecutive occasions.

(source)

But there the similarities between cosmopolitan music industry personality Molly Meldrum and socially-backward Federal MP Bob Katter end.

Now that he's managed to wedge himself a disproportionately influential slot in Federal Parliament, Bob Katter seems to be sniffing around on the periphery of just about everything.

Last week, for example, he decided to weigh in on the Queensland State Election by running a smear campaign against conservative candidate Campbell Newman, accusing him of the heinous crime of supporting gay marriage.

Hot topic right now, of course, mainly because the majority of Australians support it. But, much to the chagrin of the entire nation, the whole thing has resulted in Bob Katter being fucking everywhere again... and his seat isn't even up for grabs.

To be clear though, the Federal MP's new novelty political party does actually have candidates running in the Queensland election, so it wasn't totally out of line that he be involved; but Australia could surely have done without the nauseating effort Katter puts into avoiding the shit out of every single bloody interview question he's asked, and the affected indecipherable lunacy that accompanies it.

It's also frustrating because it seems such a no-brainer - and that Katter is simply being a pain in the arse. Again. But like far too many conservative politicians, it's more serious. He is an opportunistic religious hypocrite who has built a career out of the fears of others. He's not quite Pauline Hanson, but at least she was upfront about what she was doing and didn't keep dodging the fucking question.

Bob Katter's rise to national influence - from a belligerent backwater irrelevance to a sought-after Federal chess piece - has revealed his archaic social conservative agenda to the nation. And naturally it's totally out of touch with the nuances of urban life. That's a fact he will happily admit.

The rest of us could probably do without it, but apparently shit flows only one way, and Bob Katter keeps turning up for work regardless.

Son of another bloody politician who had the same name as him and also appears to have also been keen on Rome's Jesus, Bob "The Mad Hatter" Katter has spent his life-long political career operating in the middle of Queensland's Gulf Country. His electorate is nearly 600,000 km² big with ~0.15 voters per km².

Hanging out with his other constituents

(source)

In other words: almost no other cunts live there, and those that do are hardly likely to be authorities on matters of social intercourse. It's a distant land that, even today, remains frontier country.

Katter and his party are having a sook because they reckon that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The rest of the Western world have totally agreed to do that, and of that 'rest', the majority of us are all like 'hey dudes, we should let gay dudes and lesbians etc marry as well cause, if that's what they want to do, who gives a fuck anyway!?'

As has been pointed out a million times by the entire fucking Internet, marriage equality offers only opportunities for people - no disadvantages.

With the whole equality thing, NO ONE IS OPPRESSED AT ALL and nobody would take anything away from anybody else. Not rights, not money, not any of the things people care about.

Unless they're a bigot with too much pride and zero empathy.

On this issue, Bob Katter is being a total fucking bigot, seemingly just for the sake of it, and he is happy to publicly fall out with his own brother over it, but still have "family values" as a core policy and justification for his opinion. Right.

It is almost certain that the more Katter acts like a total wanker, the more votes his novelty party will get from the other socially-retarded bigots on the electoral roll in Queensland. Ultimately they pay his salary. The system works!

And indeed, history has proven the sheer number of redneck voters available and ready to go to the polls in that state to be nothing short of astounding. There is a booming market for baffling idiocy in Queensland.

Irony: Do you speak it?!

(source)

It's all a bit of a drag, really, especially for those of us left-leaning legends who were initially piqued by some of Bob Katter's other policies in the wake of last year's election - in particular, his economic outlook almost seemed progressive. What the fuck?

Initially there were suggestions that it might be amusing, even handy, to have a boorish good-ol'-uncle from the Gulf Country in the headlines, diggin' out old socialist economic ideas that nobody had the balls to talk about lest Rupert Murdoch's vicious reactionary machinery launched a relentless McCarthiest assault in their general direction. (It wouldn't be the first time!)

It is, for example, increasingly becoming apparent that the Australian community would have done better to hold onto particular sovereign assets, rather than relinquishing them all willy-nilly in a full-pelt rush to compete on global markets.

Katter's old school. He is all for standing up to privatisation, he wants a moratorium on coal seam gas (but hates the 'greenies' of course), and he's a fan of collective bargaining. He seemed to be a baffling mix of economic justice [protectionism actually] and social disruption. With a big fucking hat.

Sadly though, the novelty of Bob Katter: Flamboyant Über Hick evaporated pretty quickly once the cold reality of the man's old school settler colonist outlook became clear. It's all the wrong kinds of Jesus - and it's easy to forget that the early Australian Labor Party, with whom both Katter and his old man had links - could certainly devolve into a pack of racist cunts when they wanted to.

It's a little-known fact that the whole 'bourgeois' thing was actually an international conspiracy orchestrated from Peking by a small group of interstellar reptiles, cunningly disguised as 19th Century Chinese smack fiends
(source)

With this in mind, it's entirely possible to suggest that Bob Katter's seemingly 'progressive' return to community-based economic policy is in fact not a 'return' at all. He has all the hallmarks of a massively conservative Stubborn Fuck mentality whose ideas haven't changed since the 1940s.

Perhaps the banks, while they were swindling the rest of the world with neoliberalism, just didn't really bother going all the way out to Cloncurry to argue with people who hung out all day in 50°C heat with nothing but their cattle, their guns and their seemingly infinite hectares of infertile soil.

Or... maybe they figured they could just go out there a couple of decades later and start extracting natural gas from right underneath the farmers' noses, on their own lands, without even having to ask their freakin' permission.

But look, if we're being honest with ourselves, the economy, in whatever form, is nothing without quality of life - and that is what Katter is vigorously striving to deny others through his relentless opposition to marriage equality.

And, of course, Bob is more than happy to bandy around his electorate's truly epic suicide problems as his pet local sob-story whenever it suits him.

The Internet has done my work for me
(source)

So yeah, despite all his rhetoric about the importance of marriage and family stability, he seems oblivious to the idea that happiness and security in relationships is in fact a... oh, dare I say it - 'pro-life' stance.

By which I mean, 'pro-' the actual meanings of life. Like being happy and fulfilled and all that.

Take that shit away and the desire to live decreases. It's a fucking no-brainer. These 19th Century social mores that Katter is spruiking are inherently intolerant, therefore they decrease the value of life all round.

And, really, who gives a fuck about the economy, or anything else, if you're not gonna be happy either way?

ANYWAY folks reward yourself with this:

PS: just in case you missed it at the beginning.... BOB KATTER EGGED THE FUCKING BEATLES. And he brags about it. What a douche.

We believed the lies of arseholes and now we have blood on our hands and no info?

Oh, here we fucking go.

Look at Old Mate here galloping on about copyright protections and piracy prevention!

Yeah yeah yeah - we've heard it all before.

At least this dickhead isn't parading around talking about paedos this time.
Source: here.

Don't get me wrong - I very much value the entertainment market - but one can tell that this is not what this SOPA bullshit is about, at all, due to the fact that a CEO said he wanted it to happen "in order to provide jobs"

The minute a CEO says it's about jobs, it is almost always in the interests of ordinary people - workers and professionals - to do the exact opposite of what they say.

Employees are totally expendable.

Look at forestry. We were told for years it was about job protection. Eventually the whole thing was mechanised and now they employ like ten people and the community - ecologically, financially, ethically - has lost everything.

The same thing will happen in the resource sector. Just watch.

These corporations know very well that the Internet is a force for change and they'll say anything they can in an attempt to have it regulated Big China styles so they can keep on fucking everybody over in order to increase shareholder value for the next financial quarter.

Just cause this guy is in music doesn't mean the same corp doesn't also own chemical weapons factories - it's all integrated.

If the mainstream music industry is losing money, it is almost certainly due to the fact that mainstream music is totally, and completely, fucking shit.

"Be excellent to each other": 'Progress' as Actual Progress, rather than just being the word developers use whenever they want to wreck your shit

Progress is only actually progress if the resulting situation is better than the original was.

For example, the Citibank building in Perth is not progress when compared to the vastly superior Moir Chambers that once stood in its place. LOOK AT THAT SHIT. Fuck Citibank.

Citibank:
today your architecture
tomorrow the world

UPDATE: 29 October 2011 - Correction: Citibank actually took over the building after the new one was built. The new building was originally known as the 'New T & G Building.' Irrespective of this, the building is an architectural clusterfuck - an inferior shoebox - and regardless, Citibank can go get fucked for all of the many dubious things that they have done over the years. Both the building and the new owners suck arse.

Similarly, your monocultural pine plantation was a backwards move because the original wilderness was simply better, providing a thriving ecosystem that benefitted not just humanity but also the millions of life forms themselves.

What's that, multinational timber mill guy, you think you're better than them?

Listen, douchebag, your products suck and your mill is manned by robots and computers... so quit trying to manipulate your workers, whom you rip off with your stingy wages, into violently defending your share price.

Fuck your share price. If your company doesn't exist for the public good then it sucks and should be closed down.

The entire share market is based on fiat capital which doesn't really exist. Fiat capital is based on debt, and nothing else.

Therefore not only is it not REAL, the current economic structure is INFERIOR to the gold standard we had before, and was set up only to benefit aristocrats.

The capitalist fiat notion of 'economy' sucks and is not progressive.

It was originally all just based on British aristocrats enclosing The Commons and taking what was everyone's and making it their own.

Classism is pretty much the bullshit that fuels non-progressive politics. It's the aristocrats trying to maintain power. If they can't do it through force they do it through lies, such as organised religion.

What a crock of shit.

Now, before you start, I'm not valorising the working class. They are generally less educated and violent, and easily manipulated, and don't have the start-up capital to affect real change that the versatile middle classes do.

Plus most of them are now the pawns of aristocrats through their mindless brand loyalty; and the inherant anger that has them listening to mean-spirited wankers like Alan Jones and voting for neo-conservative creeps like Tony Abbott.

Fuck all neo-cons. Allowing homos to marry, for example, and other forms of legal social equity are advantageous to society because they spread love, not fear.

No true progress comes from fear.

War sucks for this reason and is just an excuse for non-progressive, non-accountable corporations to increase their share price in an economy that doesn't exist. It's the most transparent thing ever. Fuck you, Dick Cheney.

The government's role should be to keep such corporations (and real estate developers) in line, and also to act as a community chest enabling every citizen of the planet to be fed, clothed, educated, at least have a roof over their head and have access to water and cheap utilities and to be able to go to the hospital when they're sick either for free, or for cheap, or at the very least without upfront payment.

For this reason, paying tax is actually cool so long as the money is going to the correct places and not pumped into bullshit like the police force.

For god's sake, how many more times do we need to see the police used for the sole purpose of protecting the aforementioned Aristocrats of Big Capital before people learn to critically analyse the situation.

The people with the guns are not your friends.

They are trained to hate you, and assume you are a criminal, to further the power of politicians and big business who, let's face it, are in bed together nine times out of ten, trying to make the world more shit--as I asserted above.

To prevent this, and to ensure the aforementioned positive uses of government, we should all be mindful to engage in a popular, pluralist democracy based on education, rationalism, empathy, responsibility and peace.

You are not an individual floating in space alone. Your lifespan is brief but your influence can be significant. Use it wisely. And, for god's sake, don't be some Prince's pawn.

In closing, feel free to disregard the above. If all else fails, have a sick time with cunts. Even if they're aristocrats. Friendship is mutually beneficial and a totally progressive situation.

The Two Speed Economy Is An Act Of Warfare

Barnett's guns Tasering the fuck out of an unarmed man.
source

Don't be fooled by moral panics re: supposed alcoholic violence.

Prices up to curb drinking? What a joke.

We all know who the aggressors are, and they earn $1000 a day.

The Barnett Government is creating nothing less than class war.

The implementation of a Two-Speed Economy is artificially impoverishing anybody who does not capitulate to the whims of transnational mining interests.

We live on land that they want to convert into a quarry.

So, the Barnett Government have the guns (police) while their boyfriends in mining own the propaganda machine (newspaper). One can give mandate to the other.

It's terribly obvious, and so damn easy, they must wonder at night why the CCC hasn't busted in the door of the Weld Club with an axe.

This whole thing is of particular concern for the educated middle class, for whom economic imperative does not necessarily outweigh ecological and social concerns.

If you fit that category, and you want to maintain a clear conscience, you're on a fast-track back to poverty.

Western Australia could very easily slide into sheer hell if the appropriate people do not grow some testicles quickly.

This means you.

Q&A WA: Don't mention the war!

This one's an opinion piece...

The question I was handed by an anonymous source
from within the mining industry.
Source: scanned.

In November 2010, the ABC's Q&A programme came to Perth.

As I have, in recent times, been reasonably interested in What Goes On, I was particularly keen to become involved.

Eventually, after a near-miss in which I was not selected, a friend of mine came to the party with a guest pass.

It probably goes without saying that this event was intense.

On the panel was my most loathed of jerks: the enviro vandal and Protector of Big Business, the Right Honourable Cockroach, Mr Colin Barnett.

This man has an utterly infuriating position on everything.

Early in the programme he made the blanket announcement that if Australia became a republic then WA would effectively secede:

That is a distinct possibility. [see transcript]

Later, he dismissed the issue of Aboriginal incarceration in the WA prison system; going on to explain:

You know, many of the young Aboriginal people in prison are there for traffic offences, for driving without a licence in Aboriginal communities. Well, that's clearly a ridiculous situation. [see transcript]

(To be fair, he did briefly mention that leglisation would be introduced to try and combat this. Whether it ever happens is another matter.)

I tried repeatedly, in vain, to question this man regarding the loathed Stop & Search bill; which was still on the table at the time.

But it seems the show was focused on more nationally-important (I suppose) issues: the relationship between the mining industry and Aboriginal people, asylum seeker policy, and the like.

The intensity on the ground floor was insane and bizarre. It's something I won't forget in a hurry.

The weirdest part was the audience dynamic.

Now, it seems that most people are generally good people; and most of the rest are at least well-intentioned.

It doesn't take half a heart to realise that, even though I'm sure most people would probably prefer that the issue would just go away, what's going on with asylum seekers in this country is pretty fucked.

So generally, and this is just an example issue, most people in the crowd were pretty appalled by the Premier's attitude toward the issue and the vague lip service paid by the ALP's representative Stephen Smith.

Only the Greens' Rachel Siewert was willing to show some balls.

Unfortunately she is a sensible and informed, quietly spoken woman who can't really hold a candle to sensationalist questions such as this one from Gerrit Van Der Sluys:

...here in WA we are increasingly used as a perceived dumping ground for possible asylum seekers ... why is it that these people are being given more help and better treatment then homeless and impoverished Australian citizens? [see transcript]

Enter the Young Liberals.

These infuriating ideologues have to be in the highest category of 'jerk' known to man.

As I quickly learned by squabbling with them on Twitter later in the evening, they hold belligerent and dismissive attitudes towards every idea that's not based on neo-liberal post-colonialism.

They probably represented about a third, or maybe a quarter, of the audience on this particular evening. That's pretty high odds. There were heaps of them.

One of them (LYLSWA Treasurer Anthony Spagnolo) was even referred to by name by Barnett.

It's actually to the ABC's credit that these people were given a chance to speak--and they spoke a fair bit.

But it's an example of their boisterous ingratitude that they were on Twitter throughout the proceedings claiming that the "communist ABC" was censoring them and swinging the debate in the leftist direction.

If anything, these douche-bags were over-represented.

It would be disingenuous for me to claim that there isn't a place for conservative politics within the Grand Plethora. Of course there is, so long as all other angles of discourse get a look-in.

But if this is the future of the conservative party in this country then we are completely and utterly fucked.

Between Barnett--with his monarchist, protectionist, neo-liberal agenda--the steely-eyed lost cause Julie Bishop, and these kids in the audience, there wasn't one among them who came out not looking like a complete fuck head.

The only conservative who came out looking like he actually had a soul was mining industry fucko Andrew Forrest.

His attempts to give Aboriginal people large-scale employment in the mining industry are admirable, but, of course, they fail to take into account the fact that not everybody views life the same way he does.

Thank christ, then, that Marianne Mackay had managed to land herself a spot in the front row.

This relentless woman, who I'd not encountered before but have seen talk a couple of times since, pointed out fiercely that the traditional Aboriginal worldview of Country is anathema to large-scale industrial mining, and asked what the point was of employing Aboriginal people to do the one thing they didn't want to do:

If people want to help Aboriginal people get employment, don't help our people kill our land. You know, save our environment. Get on environmental protection. [see transcript]

I'm white, of course, but I'm also an environmentalist and I wish this point had been discussed further.

(It's important to note that the one Aboriginal member of the panel, Tony Wiltshire, is a successful businessman and is clearly down with the capitalist paradigm as a way forward for equality.)

But the thing I'll remember most about this whole ordeal--and it was indeed an ordeal--was the man who slipped me a piece of paper imploring me to ask his question.

He'd evidently sussed me out and desperately wanted his question answered.

"I can't ask this," he told me urgently.

"I work in mining. If I ask it, I'll lose my job."

Shit, I'll try! I thought, but I was unsuccessful in this regard.

Peering down at the neatly typed and folded piece of paper he had given me I saw the following words... written repeatedly.

Mr Premier, would you let us know whether your government has any public policies or strategies to maintain at least the current prosperity and living standards of all Western Australians, after you have send [sic] the last shipment of WA's non-renewable resources overseas? [see image above]

It shits me greatly that I wasn't quicker on the uptake.

Somebody needed to ask this question, because it's one of the most fundamental ones that Western Australian society is facing.

There's no question we're getting fat off digging up shit and selling it, but what (on Earth) are we going to do afterward?

We in WA don't exactly have the best track record of pulling off these kinds of large-scale stunts without screwing ourselves long-term... one look at the Wheatbelt should remind us of this.

As Andrew Forrest said in his final speech, to the baffled consternation of many people both in the studio and on Twitter:

I've got a number of incredibly rich friends and I can assure you they're no happier than anyone in this audience. [56:10]

Well, if money doesn't make you happy, what does? And where are our priorities? And what legacy are we leaving behind?

I do hope Q&A returns at some point, because all I was left with after this one was dozens of questions, mild confusion and a battered psyche.

NB: All unattributed quotes in this article are the author's own interpretation based on ground floor experience. It's not possible, to my knowledge, to link to old #qanda quotes on Twitter, but if it is please let me know and I'll attribute them more thoroughly. The specific Q&A episode can be streamed, and the transcript accessed, here.