The banks are made of marble,
there’s a guard at every door,
their vaults are stuffed with silver
that workers sweated for
There has been a lot of nonsense published this week about the riots in Melbourne over the Covid 19 restrictions. Tradies are angry because there is one rule for the rich and another for the poor. This is true of lockdowns but also true of many issues, education, health, wages etc. The stupidity of the right-wing in Australia is that it has jumped on this populist wave and is trying to challenge firstly the CFMEU and then ‘Dan the Man‘ for the leadership of the working class in Victoria. Are Tradies even working class? Some employ a fair number of workers and some own quite a lot of property.
Will the Right’s strategy of opposing vaccinations work? I don’t think so. Dan the Man controls the police force and so has large numbers of people he can deploy, government control the skies. Police stopped Sky News from flying over the city in helicopters to film and live stream the protests. Dan the Man has given the police free reign in the streets to make mass arrests, fire rubber bullets, assault and taser anyone who looks angry. The kind of mobilization the right is attempting never worked for the Left, so why should it work for the anti-vaxers.
On the media, Dan the Man was careful to say that most tradies had already got the jab, there is high compliance. I am not sure that the epidemiologists have a handle on the people who have got the jab in the construction industry and whether they are union members or not. Perhaps the experts underestimate the anger of the tradies. I can tell you that they drive angry, ask any cyclist.
Dan has the medicos and the middle class onside. No big problem there. He’s got the working class in the outer suburbs locked down so they can’t go to Toorak and infected Porsche driving doctors, lawyers and company directors with the ‘Delta Strain’.
The people on the Westgate bridge identified their point of departure with the Victorian Premier by claiming that he is the virus. It is surprising to find the number of relatively well-educated people who think the coronavirus was developed by the Chinese governments to kill the general population in the west. And that they are being aided and abetted by our own governments. What an amazing conspiracy theory? That the Communist Party in China could get together with Trump followers in the rust belt of the United States to spread a virus to kill people?!?
If the right wing in Melbourne had more sense, rather than attacking war memorials and John Setka from the CFMEU, they would concentrated their attack on the nonsense being put out by various authorities about the way out of the pandemic. There are some pretty outrageous claims being made on mainstream television about the science behind the pandemic and how to stop it.
It’s almost as if Dan, Anastasia and Gladys have gone temporarily insane. Sure, they are drunk with power. Who wouldn’t be, if you can shut down an entire state! They have been feeding the chooks for so long they are starting to believe their own spin.
Why would an ordinary worker give the boss the power to sack him purelyon the basis that he is not vaccinated?
For years, the courts have played this sideshow about the CFMEU union secretary, John Setka, being unfit for union office. The judge on the Royal Commission into the construction industry, Dyson Heydon, accused Setka and his deputy, Shaun Reardon, of blackmail of the concrete company Boral. They were both subsequently charged by police and taken to court.
If there is anyone unfit for public office, it is Dyson Heydon who sat on the High Court bench.
The High Court judge had this to say about evidence given by children: “Finally, children sometimes behave in a way evil beyond their years. They may consent to sexual offences against themselves and then deny consent. They may completely invent sexual offences. Some children know that the adult world regards such matters in a serious and peculiar way and they enjoy investigating this mystery or revenging themselves by making false accusations (against adults).” That puts Heydon in the same category as Bishop Peter Hollingsworth when investigating whether his priests were pedophiles. according to Hollingsworth it is the children’s fault.
Meanwhile Dan the Man is keeping the streets are safe for judges, lawyers, doctors, company directors, senior public servants, politicians and coppers – his class of people. If he fails he can always call on Scott for some nuclear submarines.
The scoreline currently reads:
Dan the Man …. 1
Tradies …. nil
But watch out for swooping magpies and angry Tradies!
Ian Curr
25 September 2021