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The leaning to authoritarianism is probably because she opted heavily in favor of the proposition that the media-tart judges of Masterchef should be hung, drawn and quartered. And left to stew in their own jus.
Political Spectrum Quiz
DH calls upon all her fellow housos to give up their wicked fuel guzzling ways and donate their BMWs and Hummers to charity.
It's time to take a principled stand!
rHow UTTERLY repulsive it was to see China's show relay in Tibet
DH is usually pretty strict about keeping this blog within its parochial parameters
But enough is enough
Then there is Zimbabwe, And the mealy-mouthed African states totally incapable of standing up for justice for their own people.
Then there are the Muslim religious fascists who have declared war on the West,
Now poor Schapelle Corby is rotting away in an Indonesian sh*thole. No doubt she smuggled a bit of dope. But this is no way to treat a human being
Everywhere you look, rotten, corrupt states getting away with it.
And at every turn the Australian left has gone to the dogs and panders to worn out arguments that everything that has gone wrong in these benighted nations is the West's fault.
It's enough to make you sick
Still, it's true that we are oil addicts and are now beginning to pay the price.
Today's SMH reports:
"Under [Howard's] Work Choices employers and staff could cash out up to two weeks of an employee's annual leave each year. Labor's standard will allow individual industrial awards to include provisions for cashing out annual leave with no ceiling on the amount that may be paid out each year."
This from a Labor Government???
Is this some kind of backdoor "Affordable Housing" strategy, tempting workers to solve a systematic problem with an individual solution?
It is clear where the extra money will go.
Some Holiday Choices! Workers will be forced to make the agonising decision. Shall I sacrifice my rest, my health, my family time to catch up on my mortgage or rent arrears".
This "Sophie's Choice" should never be imposed on the vulnerable members of society.
Only yesterday. DH praised Rudd to the skies. Kevin Rudd, go back out in the cold please.* The pic is a still from Sid Caesar's "Boardroom Lunch", which is not only brilliant slapstick, but in its ending, an education in realpolitik. Guaranteed to make your day
Dear Brother Kevin, DH has had to speak to you about this before, when you endorsed Howard's tough Welfare to Workhouse rules for the disabled. Which you announced, incredibly, the day after the Christmas holiday, 27th Dec 2006! Let DH remind you of Christ's words, and God knows, she's an atheist, so this should really not be necessary.
Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they
spin, but Solomon, in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew,
6:28)
Do you think Jesus might have been saying something about respecting each human's true nature, and allowing creation to take care of itself, without necessary flogging each creature to death to increase their production of beauty? And didn't God also admonish us, (more or less), to
Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy
Neither shall ye work thy Ministers too hard
Lest they become taskmasters over us all
Mild-mannered NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown is the the latest in a long line of Labor Housing Ministers (think the "Honorable" Joe "Mr Clean" Tripodi, and Cherie "Trust Me, I was a Houso" Burton) who get off on talking tough to small fry.
Referring to the new Tenant Fraud Amendments to the Housing Act 2001 tabled in Parliament last week, which will see draconian measures to combat public housing tenant fraud, Matt Brown told the Daily Telegraph "We won't cop anyone ripping off those most in need".
And BMW owners have had a wake-up call too from our fearless Minister. They can forget about applying for public housing now. They'll just have to go back to the North Shore where they belong.
This inflammatory language is certain to rebound on the vast majority of honest 
tenants scratching to get by in poorly maintained housing stock, thanks to combined Howard Government parsimony and lack of commitment and imagination from NSW Labor.
Like the renowned Strong Man of NSW, Morris Iemma, (oh, please, don't frighten us!), young Matt has taken to talking big, in language he wouldn't dare use if he was targetting the major perpetrators of fraud in this country, big business tax "minimizers".
Think Kerry Packer, who got a State Funeral for his services to Tax Evasion. That parasite is still getting increasingly moist-eyed obituaries lamenting the "good old days", when the bugger paid practically no tax, and then gambled away the hard labor of Australians in overseas casinos and horse races.
A recent report in the "The Australian" estimates that a number of Australia's wealthiest millionaires are defrauding the Australian public by at least $700,000,000 in tax evasion schemes. According to a figures based on an unrelated press release (see below), from NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown, this massive amount would purchase 3000 public housing dwellings. We can only hope that our indefatigable parliamentarians will put as much legislative effort into naming, shaming and prosecuting their wealthy scrounger business mates, as they do to "protecting" all us "good tenants" who do not currently have a pied-a-terre in Liechtenstein.
If only our Housing Ministers could figure out a better way of being "fair" to us housos than bringing calumny on all our heads with press releases catchily titled "Crackdown on rip-offs to create fairer public housing in NSW "...
Perhaps its time to call these these private housing tax cheats by a new name: AntiSocial Housos.
Whatever happened to the good ole' Class Struggle? Bring back the good old days...
Disclaimer: In principle DH supports exposing wealthy cheats no matter where they live. She does not currently have any assets in Liechtenstein.
Given the bad smell that's been hanging around our late unlamented housing minister for the last few years, it's been a longtime coming.
Housos with long memories will remember Joe as the Minister for Divesting Housos of BMW's.
(Apologies to the relatively handsome and intelligent Billy Bunter)
And on what major issue of principle did Joey Hockey,
(egged on by young Abbott Minor)
choose to take his last stand?
What a pleasure it would be to see him breeched from Parliament
by the same cruel standards he imposed on low income Australians.
How sweet it'd be to see Hockey, schoolboy cap in hand, queuing up for Newstart!
Hocks demonstrating that even a cardboard Rudd has more brainsRISING rents are forcing thousands of people to skip meals and admit they are too poor to send their children on school excursions, new figures reveal.
Housing experts warned yesterday that the home affordability crisis threatens to destabilise the economy and drive the country into recession.
And Labor says the Howard government knew more than two years ago that one-third of renters were suffering from rental stress but failed to acknowledge the problem.
Major egg on face. DH so loved the story of John Howard being totally ignored at Paddy McGuinness' wake, that when she saw one of Paddy's drinking mates at the Unity, she couldn't resist barging in to hear the delicious story embellished again. Well, darn it! The story was not true! Apologies all around. Apparently the reality was that people were queuing up to talk to Howard, he was not particularly bailed up by local Labor Identity, and what's more he was buying drinks all round. What's more, the relayer of the tale, another local Labor Identity, was not even there, according to DH's informant.
Disappointing, but instructive for any budding journalist. DH's crowd all wanted to believe it so much!
DH was much disappointed. But greatly cheered up to check Sitemeter, and find someone had googled "Brendan Nelson is an imbecile", and was directed straight to this blog.
The white paper received the immediate backing of the Opposition. "It is one of the paradoxes of Australian society that our country is going so well whilst many families are struggling in day-to-day life, that we still have far too many people that are homeless," said the Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson.
"The health and integrity of human life, the extent to which we are able to look after people on the margins of our society - in the end they are critical measures of Australia."
A paradox, a paradox
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!
It's no secret that housos in Balmain are slaves of Woolworths, either as casual workers or shoppers. Without cars to transport our shopping we're a captive market to a store which, according to locals, capitalises on its relative isolation by charging outrageous prices. While DH doesn't know if this is true or not, as she doesnt have the car to zip around Sydney's malls to compare prices, even if it isn't, the place is a thorn in everyone's side. And that's simply for being an eyesore, a blot on a historic landscape by a company that makes huge profits from the local area, and feels no obligation to fit in. This is not helped by Leichhardt Council's pitiful attempt at civic landscaping in the forecourt (Photo following and see below).
Now DH swears that she has never in her life listened to Alan Jones until this week, preferring Auntie for her breakfast shot of political spleen. But maybe she should listen more often.
Woolworths: Unfair Trade Practises and Irresponsible Alcohol Service
Jones has been doing a very worthwhile number on Woolworths: yesterday exposing its pricecutting/ transfer pricing tricks to squeeze out local businesses, and today, revealed that in Moree, while the local pubs conform to a code of responsible alcohol service in an attempt to reduce the devastation of alcoholism, particularly amongst the Aboriginals in the area, Woolworths refuses to come to the party. No excuses given with profit the obvious motive. Woolworths begins selling alcohol at 7am in the morning to the local desperates.
And what's more astonishing, Woolworths owns nearly 300 pubs in Australia, and its gaming profits last year were $1 billion! Better check the figure folks, it seems astounding,
While DH is not yet about to embrace Alan Jones, and suspects he's either in the pay of Coles or the Hotel Industry Lobby, she reckons she's going to do her best to do her shopping elsewhere. DH actually recalls the golden 70's in Balmain, where she lived for 5 years and did all her shopping, along with the rest of the suburb, at the local greengrocers. She only set foot in Woolworths once or twice in that whole time. No one she knew would have been caught dead in it! How times change, and especially when you're poor. No avoiding a mutual pernicious relationship with the chainstores.
Leichhardt Council should focus on infrastructure not fringe groups
Talking about the tragic appearance of the Woolworths Forecourt, the Village Voice recently compared Marrickville, Leichhardt and Canada Bay Councils' attitude to getting involved in global issues. The last time DH was in Concord, she was envious and knocked out by what a great buzz the new Concord Village had acquired in the years since she was last there. Why can't we have that in Balmain, whose grubby, spotty pavements, general air of disrepair, and neglect are getting truly depressing.
DH couldn't help drawing the conclusion that there was an inverse relationship between the cleanliness of a municipalities pavements and the degree of Councils involvement in global politics.
DH has no objection to Leichhardt involving itself in a truly popular political cause that is clearly supported by the overwhelming majority of the community. But the council has thrown way too much time, and therefore money, away, at the behest of the "Friends of Hebron", a fringe group that is not even located in the area, time that would have been better spent on organising a cleanup of the streets. And let's not even mention the worst of the lot for pavements and political meddling, Marrickville.
While we do not know what the facts are around Heath Ledger's death, we do know that he died surrounded by prescription drugs, and that he was taking them to manage insomnia and anxiety caused by the inflexible demands of his job.
The fact is that for all the glory, kudos, and high pay, Heath Ledger was just another worker who had to be drugged to keep up the regular output that "the shareholders" demand.
Since it's past midnight, DH, an insomniac herself, has no time to summarise the argument that Capitalism is powered by the invention of linear time, the control of the clock, and the theft of workers's time.
But, just guessing: Heath Ledger had, like many (most?) creatives, irregular biorhythms. Perhaps like many (most?) creatives, his prodigious talents relied on mood swings, the bars of excellence are so high that we must borrow prodigiously from future exhaustion to achieve todays heights.
But when the corporation demanded its due, Heath Ledger faced the same choice as all of us. Regulate your biorhythms to fit the needs of Moloch, or go on the Disability Pension. (should the money run out, or the millions be invested in the wrong shares)
Perhaps the prospect of living on $250 a week didn't appeal to him? Perhaps he didn't wish to be scrutinised fortnightly to see if he was "really" disabled, or just faking it to live a life of luxury and ease at the taxpayer's expense.
What's in a Name?
Heath: as in the Bronte's or Shakespeare's Heath, the place of wild untamed dangerous creative forces, the place where madness lay, but also the unenclosed commons.
"This was not 'no-man's land', but was populated by many small-holders, subsistence farmers and masterless men and women, 'living out of sight and out of slavery' (according to Winstanley, the anti-slavery campaigner). The commons was ... [a place where] the people's ideas (not ideas in the mind, but ideas that shaped daily life) of what work is and what a worker is, of the relation between work and need, work and nature, work and time, were also obstacles to the establishment of a money economy."
Wild Heath, Yorkshire,
And so to bed, for what dreams may come, and besides, tomorrow, Centrelink waits for no man...
DH is just listening to Radio National's Law Report as she types.
She is GOBSMACKED by what she is hearing!
Young children abandoned in the house alone while a sole parent is hauled off from the front yard by police. In the worst cases, the police not even allowing the parent to tell the child, who is left to find out by their own devices! Children left in the homes of god knows who, sometimes in the care of neighbours not even known to the family, in other, with their parent's drug addicted associates. Young children not even at puberty left alone to care for toddler siblings! Young teens left to fend for themselves in the streets. And no services who know or care.
How shameful and horrifying to think these poor darlings are simply abandoned, humiliated, shocked, and traumatised for life.
"Innocent until proven guilty" may apply to the offending parent
But for the children, it is "Scarred for life: Punished whether Mum and Dad turn out to be guilty or not"
How is it possible that in a modern state, there are no protocols in place for dealing with the children of people caught up in the criminal justice system!!!??
How is it possible that there have never been any crusading exposes in the media of this national scandal?
Not to mention the guilt she suddenly feels about neighbour's kids. Could she have done more?
It has often been remarked that society has a two faced attitude to children. On the one hand, holy innocents. On the other, savages. Now we see that in the eyes of the state, there is a third view: Unrepresented no-count swill.
Some attitude to our national treasure, society's future!
Centrelink was ordered last month to cease stopping welfare payments while it investigated claims of people failing to meet their requirements
Our Kevin who art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name
For thou has delivered us from Evil
Our mighty Rudd, thou hath smote them
And dashed them in pieces
And hopefully thou shalt afflict them sorely with taxes
And send auditors over them
Thy will be done, in NSW Labor as it is in Canberra
Give us next fortnight our fortnightly benefit
And forgive us our failures of participation
As we forgive those who bungled our rightful claims
But lead us not into inflation, (if thou canst manage it)
For thine is the Mandate
The Power and the Glory
For ever and ever,
Amen
The unvarnished facts gleaned from the Daily Telegraph You Pay: Tenants Rorting Public Housing are:
No. of tenants understating their income 
No of tenants NOT understating their income:by more than $80,000 = 1
by more than $1,000 = 11 (excluding the high flier above)
by between $500 and $1000 = 86
by less than $500 = 939GRAND TOTAL = 1,037
No. of tenants the Telegraph would like you to think are rorting the system:= 150,000 - 1,037
= 148,963 (approx)
- To stir up hatred and sell papers
- To soften up the public to accept the first round of evictions on shorten term leases (assuming a lead time of 1 year)
- To give a balanced report on the the policy black hole around housing affordability under the Howard Government's watch
- To comfort the 70,000 unfortunates languishing on the housing waiting lists and encourage them to believe that problems would be speedily resolved if a few rorters were caught
- To divide and rule the lower classes (and sell more papers)
- Most of the above...
Ans: Your guess is as good as DH's
Check out the Tele's readers comments on the article. You will find that it has, pouring out of the woodwork, the usual suspects: Axegrinders, outraged taxpayers, and unfortunate naifs on the waiting lists who imagine that their misery would end simply by the elimination of the few thousand rorters. And of course, it's a great opportunity to incite the rednecks who are quite certain its all done by "New Australians". Race riots are always good sellers.
But DH must be honest:
Are there rorters in public housing?
Yes
Are there petty crims and drug dealers in public housing?
Yes.
Are there major crims and drug lords in public housing?
You gotta be joking! They live in the best suburbs of crse.
Are there more than were caught?
Yes
Does the Dept know of some of them?
Yes, because their neighbours are always reporting them.
Why does the Dept do nothing?
Just guessing about what goes on in the DOH black box, but local offices appear to be so understaffed and demoralised that they can't even organise basic non-emergency repairs, let alone evictions.
Why doesn't the NSW ALP do something about it?
Good question.
When will a wealthy country like Australia start putting in $$$ to ensure that all its citizens are housed adequately?
As soon as the Daily Telegraph gets a sense of social responsibility and stops inciting class hatred and downward envy.
And finally, whoever it was who earns more than $100,000. Obviously, they qualify for public housing purely on the grounds of mental illness. Why else would they stay?
Despite apparently failing to dig up either a houso who would deign to talk to them, or a resentful houso-in-waiting to exploit, the Daily Telegraph went ahead and published their nasty piece of work "You pay: Tenants rorting public housing"
DH believes in freedom of information and has no issues with the Telegraph publicising the fact that 1037 people underestimated their income in order to live a life of luxury and excess at the taxpayer's expense.
But what a slant! The article manages to create a swatch of new realities for a "Brave New Australia": Analysing the subtext we read
DH has just had advance notice that the Daily Telegraph is planning a beat-up on housos for New Year's Day.
She just got a breathless call from Telegraph reporter David Barrett, a young man in a hurry. Apologising for the short notice, he wanted to enlist her aid in a proposed panegyric on houso "fraudsters" who are to be blamed for the long waiting lists for public housing. No obvious mention of government policy failure was foreshadowed.
No doubt there are fraudsters out there (ye shall know them by the BMWs parked ostentatiously in the lean-to, if our late unlamented Housing Minister, and examplar of the modest lifestyle, Joe Tripodi, is to be believed). But it's nothing like the con perpetrated on the Aussie public by the Howard Government which ripped $3 billion dollars out of public housing and put it into the pockets of private landlords to no useful effect. What young David wanted was for DH to put him, pronto, onto any poor homeless sods languishing on the waiting list. DH was about to give David a piece of her mind on how she was not about to abet the Daily Telegraph's despicable policy of sooling the plebs onto each other to sell more papers, and perhaps even suggest he might like to do an indepth piece on housing policy, instead. But the poor little thing hurriedly apologised and hung up. DH indulged herself in the distinctly pleasurable reflection that the lad was probably getting the bum's rush all over Sydney from wised-up housos who were not about to be divided and ruled. So if the piece fails to materialise tomorrow, you'll know why.
PS: ... Not to put too paranoid a spin on it, but when is the first round of evictions of short-term leased tenants due? ... and what's the lead-time for softening up the public to accept it?
Announced in mid December, and with a closing date at the end of January, just when no tenant groups are active, it's down to individual local heroes with nothing better to do over the Christmas holidays than to sweat over a grant submission. And demonstrate that their project will "promote community awareness and skills development and can demonstrate through practical examples innovative ways to increase environmental sustainability within social housing communities". As the song says,*(not to mention either incorporate as an organisation, or find one to
sponsor you. If one is open over Christmas of course).
And may the Federal Labor's National Affordable Rental Incentive* and DOH's Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative, be speedily implemented and bring salvation and peace to suffering tenants throughout the land.
* Ok, so it turns out they call it NRAS (National Rental Affordability Scheme) not NARI. What do we care as long as it happens anytime soon?
Dear Brother Kevin, Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do the spin, but Solomon, in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew, 6:28)
DH has had to speak to you about this before, when you endorsed Howard's tough Welfare to Workhouse rules for the disabled. Which you announced, incredibly, the day after the Christmas holiday, 27th Dec 2006!
Let DH remind you of Christ's words, and God knows, she's an atheist, so this should really not be necessary.
Do you think Jesus might have been saying something about respecting each human's true nature, and allowing creation to take care of itself, without necessary flogging each creature to death to increase their production of beauty?
And didn't God also admonish us to
Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy
Don't work your Ministers too hard,
Lest they become taskmasters over us all
The idea, Brother Kevin, was to lead Australia out of bondage, and free us from Howard's cruel Welfare-to-Workhouse taskmasters, not to lead us into bondage.
The idea of a Labor party, was not to make workers labour more. It was to make their labours easier.
So take a moment to breathe deeply, and notice that progressives and humanists have won the election. There is no need to kowtow to the most punitive and retrograde elements of society!
Now please make sure our MP's and Ministers get adequate rest over Christmas, and set an example to all of us.
Tanya is a dream politician: highly intelligent, balanced, sensible and competent, an excellent communicator, hardworking and conscientious, utterly reliable, approachable, friendly, unpretentious, and importantly truly compassionate and devoted to social justice. What extraordinary tectonic shifts in the Australian political scene!
DH has always put her faith in the view that where the people lead, the politicians will follow. The people showed they had risen above responding to the panic buttons that Howard and the Liberal Party had used so successfully in the last century. They have swept aside the ugly polarisation of the last decade, and now we see that the both Labor and Liberals have reconstellated around the middle path. Both parties appear to be moving in a very positive way to dealing with the challenges of the 21st century. The old fogeys of the right are gone with their ancient hatreds and prejudices. The left have been forced to get down off their hobby horses of pure theory and face practical reality.
Just one week, and the hatreds and brown fugg of the Howard era seem like light years away.
It appears that Australia has had a peaceful revolution and it's difficult to imagine the country being hijacked again by extremists in any foreseeable future.
May it ever be thus.
Federal
State
Keep up the Good Work
Local Department of Housing Offices
Omigod!!!!
Only God and Schrodinger know what goes on inside the black box known as your average NSW Department of Housing Local Office. Is there an administrative system in there, or just some kind of cat that, at any given moment, may be alive or dead?
The remaining notes are accordingly speculative only...
So far, the cat must be more or less alive, because everytime the box is pried open (the only way is to complain to your local member), there appears to be some feeble thumping in response but it all soon dies down again ...
.... that's it for now. More bright ideas following
HOW TO EARN MORE FOR 3 DAYS WORK THAN FOR 4
The pincers in action: DOH and Centrelink between them manage to create the mother of all disincentives to work and education.
DH has quit F/T work. It just wasn't worth it. Tired all the time, no money, her daughter is a stranger, she hasn't visited her mother in yonks, the house is a mess, no money for repairs or maintenance, and not even enough money leftover for the all important lattes.
The blue line shows DH's net weekly income after rent, for 21 hours work.If satire is the housing of last resort for the politically homeless, then let us pray that the Labor victory will put Diary of A Desperate Houso out of business.
In the meantime, DH thinks it fitting to resurrect this Lazarus of All Jokes in tribute to the era tha has passed
John Howard goes to hell and is met by the Devil, who says "There are 3 rooms here and you can choose which one you want to spend eternity in".
The Devil takes him to the first room which has the seedy appearance of a government funded dental hospital waiting room. An endless queue of lost souls clutching their jaws and writhing in agony are hopping from foot to foot in front of a door that says "reopening just as soon as hell freezes over". The Devil explains that this room is reserved for Moloch Worshippers who believed that Market Forces would look after the Meek (in the long term).
The Devil takes him to next room, "Mistress Miranda DeVine's Dungeon", where abject souls are being made to drink Lattes till their eyes pop out of their heads under the merciless tongue lashing of the hell kitten herself, all the whiles listening to a droning commentary from a quivering mass of ectoplasm going under the name of Gerard Henderson.
Finally the Devil ushers him into a third room and while it's true that everyone appears to be up to their knees in dreck, nevertheless they're all standing around quite sociably, drinking cups of tea and chatting.John Howards chuckles to himself, "Well, this is not too bad considering the swifties I pulled on the the mug battlers. I reckon I can handle this". So he helps himself to a cuppa and an iced vovo and prepares to meet and greet.
Just as he is about to take a sip, the loudspeaker suddenly blares. "A special announcement. The management would like to extend an especially warm welcome to former Australian PM, John Howard, the inspiration for our new industrial relations policy, Hellchoices. We are sure that he has made the right choice in accepting our offer of an iced vovo as a tradeoff on his annual teabreak.
OK punters, time's up. Everybody back on your heads!"
