Desperate Houso Evicted!

Dear Readers,

The time has come when I must evict DH from her tenancy in my teeming, overcrowded brain.

I have tolerated this strident termagant for quite long enough. She has failed to bring in even so much as a googly cent for all the time she has wasted on ranting and trying to be funny. Times are getting tougher and I regret that I am no longer in a position to act the philanthropist or carry on subsidizing my inner "artist".

The fact is that I'm totally demoralised, and drastic action is called for. My market rent has gone up to $440 a week, and what with paying HECS-HELP and SFSS, with the anachronistic Rental Subsidy Eligibility limit threatening to cut out just at the maximum I can hope to earn with my meagre talents as a $35 an hour contractor (no holiday pay, sick pay, or any kind of leave, remember), I'm giving up all hope of self-realisation. Instead, I plan to spend any free time I have trying to nut out a system for winning Lotto at last.

Yes, yes, I know, private renters are doing it tough too. But is it my fault that the Howard Government neglected housing policy for 10 years and landed us all in this fine mess?

Is it my fault that all we've had to stand up for us losers in NSW is the likes of Tripodi, Cherie Burton, and Public Landlord No1, the Overlord of the Underwear, Matt Brown?

Besides, now that we don't have Mr Banality-0f-Evil himself, John Howard, to kick around anymore, the joy has simply gone out of blogging.

...

It all began way back in 2005, with the upbeat entry Unemployed again!

When I first let DH have a free rein here, I was hoping to have a good old vent about how I being pincered in a poverty trap between Centrelink's mean-spirited bunglings and DoH's short-sighted work disincentives. Perhaps I even had some vague ambition that one day "Desperate Houso" might contribute some modest footnote to a future history detailing the death throes of the Welfare State.

Little did I realise that Desperate Houso's diary would one day become a hugely popular website amongst some of the world's most neglected niche populations. I refer, of course, to South American Nazi Sympathisers With Dyslexia, and Florida Retirees with Oral-Hygiene Issues.

Hardly a day goes by that some would-be Nazi with a spelling problem does not lob here to read the groundbreaking expose which proved that Howard's new National Aspirationalism was nothing more than a Nasi Party front. Or have the Brazilians been misleading us all these years into thinking their alphabet contains the letter "Z"?

As for the Florida pensioners, my impassioned outcry, Wake up and smell the bad breath. Something rotten in the state of Howard's Australia which so resoundingly denounced the Howard Government's lowest act, the destruction of free public clinics, has proved an irresistible drawcard. Clearly there are more Yanks out there worrying about their morning breath than they do about their failing sub-prime mortgage sector.

Apart from that the only other conspicuous search term is "That nincompoop, Brendan Nelson". And that's not likely to last much longer.

Not a lot to say after that.

Just itching to ditch a blog that's just not fun anymore...

Google StreetView nabs BMW

Being the public-spirited houso that she is, DH feels she has been seriously letting herself down.

With Housing NSW' Tenant Fraud Hotline in full swing, she has so far failed to dob in so much as one single BMW owner! She knows they're out there in droves, her Housing Ministers have told her so, yet she daily struggles with the guilty knowledge that it is only her lack of vigilance that has prevented the apprehension of these unconscionable barnacles on the public purse.

So when she first heard of Google Streetview yesterday, she realised immediately that she had the perfect tool to do the necessary large scale reconnaisance of the neighbourhood!

While it is true that she has not so far been able to capture any BMW in flagrante in the neighbourhood, DH wasn't born yesterday, you know. Why, there are no lengths to which the sybarites of public housing will not go to conceal the evidence of their opulent lifestyles! So she was a wise-up as soon as she discovered the suspicious object depicted. She anticipates that she will be in a position to make a citizen's arrest just as soon as she has had a chance to nip down the road and peak under the next-door's tarp.

She urges her fellow tenants to follow her example, do the right thing, and keep a close watch on their precincts. It is to be hoped that the Department's Tenant Fraud SWAT team has lost no time in establishing an evaluatory committee to investigate the addition of this invaluable tool to the Departmental Surveillance Armoury.

Note: DH hastens to advise Housing NSW that the late model Hyundai Getz peeking out of her garage belongs to a visiting friend.