John Linton Have you ever wondered just how incompetent and corrupt every aspect of the 'public service' administration in Australia (or any other country for that matter) is? From the Prime Minister and the State premiers on down through your local council approval apparatchiks to the policeman eating at the local takeaways? Have you ever wondered how it got that way?
A general view of the hopelessness of public administration:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/idealism-turns-us-on-but-reality-bites-20111022-1mdp8.html
Part of the price paid by tax payers for Ms Faustus to buy her illegitimate prime ministership:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/billiondollar-men-on-electoral-skids-20111024-1mgef.html
Do you ever try and think back to a time when 'public service' was not a sick joke or was Cincinnatus, some 2,500 years ago the last example of 'civic virtue' that ever existed? Have you noticed that no Australian Labor prime minister ever left 'office' without more money and assets than their total published salary and allowances while in office could possibly have generated? Did you ever wonder how the planning committee members on your local council paid for the new cars they always seem to drive? Perhaps, like me, you simply accept that in today's world, corruption is the highest tax any 'honest' person pays to work and live in today's Australia?
Why such dark thoughts to start the day? No particular reason other than scanning the 'news' and half listening to Annette's breakfast conversation about aspects of life in Mosman. It seems that everything any person who pays taxes and/or owns a home has to pay a considerable amount of money to just 'live' in a community over and above the taxes paid on your own earnings and the rates for the various 'services' that are required to stay alive in the area you have selected to live in. Despite the GST having been around for so long every 'tradesman' seems to only accept cash for any work you need done that is beyond your own strictly limited competencies in replace and repair situations.
I tried to find incidences of public probity in today's papers/actual and online, but failed to find one. Instances of public malfeasance appeared on almost every page and I gave up counting at 30. While I realise that only 'bad' news makes media distribution and 'good' news largely goes unreported it would also be true that almost all corruption never makes it to public knowledge and that you can be pretty sure that nothing has changed much, only got a lot worse, since Diogenes went on his torch light searches. So why do honest citizens put up with the total self serving corruption of the public administrations that they allow to control their lives? I certainly don't know and never have understood the situation beyond meaningless aphorisms such as "all power corrupts...." and others of similar ilk.They may well express valid commentary but they don't explain the essential evils of 'public service' being a synonym for 'public theft'.
Doubtless it is advancing age and the concomitant long period of never believing a word that is said by any politician (having lived long enough to have seen every utterance proven to be a lie) and having seen so many 'public servants' arraigned by some court or other for criminal acts. It didn't help, at a very young age when one of the three jobs I worked to keep myself fed was at an illegal gambling club, to see so many policemen being paid quite large sums of money to allow the illegal casino I dealt Baccarat in to continue to operate and also sell drugs and run prostitution. I have never looked for a single honest man but I very much doubt, that if I did, I could ever find one among 'public servants'.....irrespective of how much torch technology has improved over the intervening years.
Not the brightest mood to start any day.
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