Category Archives: political cartoons

The devil’s in the detailed programmatic specificity

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The Australian 6 December 2010

The title of this blog post isn’t really relevant, but I was dying to work it into a caption when Kevin was running the joint.

Kev’s back in the news with the startling disclosure that the USA is a bit worried about China taking over the place and the less surprising revelation that Kevin had the whole thing sorted until Julia brutally stabbed him in the back, condemning the planet to Chinese totalitarian rule shortly before we all die of climate change, which Kevin also would have fixed but for That Meddling Woman.

Anyway, to the apocalypse at hand: wikileaks, huh? What’s going on there? The bottom line is that politics is based on the assumption that a majority of people are dangerous lunatics who can’t be trusted with anything sharp and the rest are complete idiots who can’t be trusted with anything sharp, hence the quite accurate principle that what people don’t know probably won’t hurt them and definitely won’t hurt us.

This is why governments are extremely keen that the dangerous lunatics/idiots outside the tent are kept in the dark about what the slightly better informed dangerous lunatics/idiots inside are up to (which mainly involves drinking cocktails and trying to look like you know what’s going on).

Unfortunately, the dangerous lunatics/idiots at wikileaks have failed to realise how the game is played in polite company (as is the wont of uninformed dangerous lunatics/idiots from outside the tent) and are revealing to the entire campsite that nobody really has a clue (except Kevin of course) possibly causing worldwide panic, even though we all knew that already.

It ain’t what you know, it’s who else knows it.

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The Hobart Mercury 30 November 2010


You know how we drum into our kids how important it is to tell the truth? I’ve always thought it’s an important developmental milestone when they work out that this is in fact a big fat lie, after which human behaviour will start making a great deal more sense to them.

In the same vein, you’d think there must be some bloody awkward cocktail parties every time Wikileaks spills the beans, but in reality I suspect it merely adds one more layer of intrigue (read “bullshit” for that if you’re still in truth mode) to proceedings.

Spreadsheets will make your head explode

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The Australian, 25 November 2010

The NBN is a cracking idea and if it ever gets built, in no time people will be wondering how the hell we ever managed without it. However, I’m not sure the government is really entering into the spirit of our dawning Information Age. When you’re spending 40-odd billion dollars replacing the gigantic monopoly that is Telstra with an even more gigantic monopoly that will be the NBN, it is not unreasonable to expect a fair bit of scrutiny of exactly how you’re going about it, simply on the grounds that getting the details right before you start breaking out the yellow helmets and fluoro vests is much less expensive than doing it afterwards.

Let’s face it, they’re all on the naughty list anyway.

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The Sunday Telegraph, 21 November 2010

In a wildly optimistic moment, Premier Keneally has told her cabinet to keep their clothes on and behave themselves at office Christmas parties this year. She then went on to instruct ministers to ensure media advisers and chiefs-of-staff did not post inappropriate comments or photographs on Facebook or Twitter.

Now while I’ve never had any experience being a state premier myself, telling members of the NSW Labor party to behave themselves and not post the evidence on social media sites strikes me as being somewhat like pulling on a pair of bright red trakkie dacks and waving one’s backside in the direction of an enraged bull.

Eat, drink, be merry and share it all on Facebook I reckon, you might as well enjoy the last few days of Rome.