Friday 3rd of May 2024
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fear loathing on the way to the forum ....

fear & loathing on the way to the forum ....

 

A chill wind blew down from the Brindabellum Mountains and over Capittaline Hill as footsteps echoed across the Forum in the pale light of the long-awaited dawn. Wrapping her cloak tightly around her, Julia Caesar shivered. How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

She gazed up at the statue of her illustrious predecessor, Bennelongus Imperium. Relaxum and Comfortabilis was his motto. How ordinary these words now looked, etched in stone and covered in bird poop. Yet, she now realized, they possibly represented the greatest triumph any leader could achieve.

Passing the vomitorium, she could hear squeals of delight and faint laughter intermingled with sounds of dry-retching and puking. No doubt, she thought to herself, Slipperius was down there in his black toga regurgitating his cab charges.

Where on earth, she wondered, did he go on all those long journeys? And what debauchery went on in the back of those chariots that had so depleted the imperial coffers?

Swiftly walking past the Unionatis Hospitalis, she shuddered at the thought of her favoured son, the handsome Dobellius, taking tithes off the lowly slaves who toiled to clean soiled bed-sheets while he cavorted in the Via Bordello.

She turned abruptly, certain she could hear someone following her. Treachery and subterfuge swirled around her, clothed in darkness. Her enemies were everywhere, plotting, waiting for the right moment to strike.

But she knew she could defeat them all, she was certain of that. " They may have knives", she thought to herself, "but they are as nothing compared to my formidable political skills, my acute sense of timing, my renowned judgment, my phenomenal ability to communicate with the masses and my mesmerising vocal skills.” Her enemies didn't stand a chance!

But still, that nagging feeling kept creeping back: where on earth was Kevino Septimus?

One by one she mentally ticked off her foes. There was Minimus Shortus, the diminutive former slavemaster who had recently taken to mocking her in the Forum. "Whatever the Empress says, I support" he had proclaimed to roars of laughter from the crowds, "even though I have no idea what it is she said."

More cunning was Praaetor Smith, with his cash-starved armies outside the city walls in the Fields of Duntroon. For 18 months he had patiently waited for the moment to strike, like an adder in the grass.

And what of Senator Carcero, the great orator with the booming voice, who as tribune of Nova South Walesium had razed it to the ground with his Punic land tax while entertaining the proletariat with extravagant Games in his specially built Colosseum?

How smart had it been to let him back into the Senate? Had his ambitions been sated? Still on travels to distant lands, imposing Roman law on the Fijians, she was relieved she had sent him far away.

She turned to look at the foundation stones of the Basilica Juia, where her statue was being built, a magnificent testimony to her legacy, emblazed with her own epithet: Nos sunt nobis: we are us. It would be the largest statue in Rome. After all, wasn't her most towering achievement, the introduction of the Carbonara Tax, a 23 dinar levy on all pasta production, a triumphant political victory that future generations would honour her for?

Most dangerous of all, she knew, were those closest to her. Such as Quastor Waynium Swannus, the man she trusted more than any other with the regulation of marketplaces. His day of glory was fast approaching, when he would trick the plebeians by showering them with surplus bread and treasure. She felt an icy chill run down her spine. Somehow, she couldn't help thinking, whenever a leader was overthrown it was he who was always left standing.

Or Gregorius Combatus? A soldier of fortune who'd made his name all those years ago, fighting injustice among the patrician galley-owners. He was now chief priest of the goddess Gaia, a powerful position from whence he could scrutinise the entrails. What had they really told him about her future? Even old Creaanus, could she really trust him?

She stopped to listen, certain someone was close by. She froze as she heard the serpentine hiss of steel being drawn from leather. "Julia!" a voice whispered behind her. She spun around and couldn't believe her eye. "You?" she said. "What on earth are you...? But already it was too late.

Rowan Dean, who wrote this brilliant piece, is an Australian Financial Review columnist.

 

exit stage right ...

Some might agree that Labor’s big business forum at Doltone House next week confirms the realpolitik need for the party to work the big end of town, just as hard as it is in trying to recapture its former heartland in Rooty Hill.

There are a good many others however who see Labor’s self-serving dalliance with business as being one of the main reasons that its former true believers left town in the first place.

Whilst Big Julie & her advisers seem hell-bent & determined that Labor must be seen as being all things to all people, sadly they simply succeed in highlighting the fact that they now seem to serve just themselves.

dealing with that sense of entitlement .....

dealing with that sense of entitlement .....

February 5, 2013: Gillard contributes $1 million the Queensland Flood Appeal.

So here’s what Julia Gillard and Bob Carr have given away, of your money, since theAustralia Day long weekend, the weekend when tropical storm Oswald smashed Bundaberg.

February 11 2013: Gillard contributes $15 million to rehabilitate 40 kilometres of main road in South Tarawa, Kiribati, which has been undermined by rising sea levels and coastal erosion.

February 4 2013: Gillard contributes $5 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) .South Sudan

February 4 2013: Gillard contributes an additional $3 million in humanitarian assistance for people are still reeling from the impact of Typhoon Bopha in the southern .Philippines

31 January 2013: Bob Carr today pledged a further $10 million in humanitarian assistance for people affected by the worsening conflict in .Syria

30 January 2013: Bob Carr today pledged $15 million to provide better access to education for the boys and girls of .Myanmar

30 January 2013: Bob Carr has pledged $5 million in humanitarian assistance for  and the surrounding region to assist hundreds of thousands of people affected by conflict and food insecurity.Mali

25 January 2013: Gillard provides a further $2 million to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

25 January 2013: Gillard announced a further $2 million to help (Fijian) children get back to school in the first term of the school year following the devastation of Tropical Cyclone Evan late last year.

So between the Australia Day long weekend and 11th February 2013, Gillard & Co has given away $57 million to various foreign aid beneficiaries. I’m sure the  flood victims could have used the $57 million to help them out?Queensland

In all about 4224 properties were damaged with 2302 deemed uninhabitable. More than half of those uninhabitable properties, about 1321, are inBundaberg.

And to really rub salt in the wound, on 8th February 2013, Gillard reprioritised up to $375.1 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in the 2012–13 financial year to support asylum seekers waiting to have their claims heard in . The support will cover food, shelter and other essential items.Australia

The reprioritisation represents a small portion (around 7 per cent) of Australia’s total aid program, which is still expected to reach around $5.2 billion in the 2012–13 financial year and is consistent with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) Reporting Directives.

Only Labor would treat fellow Australians in their time of need as an inconvenience.

 

cameos in waiting ....

Kevin Rudd has abandoned a celebrity tour of Sydney's western suburbs to avoid an embarrassing clash with the Prime Minister's election campaign visit there next week.

The events cancelled include Hot Autumn Night, a glittering Neil Diamond tribute show at the Rooty Hill RSL Club where he would have been the headline act, performing a medley of the star's greatest hits.

Also axed are a week as head coach with the Bulldogs for their opening NRL game against the Cowboys next Saturday, a guest role as Petruchio in the Penrith Q-Theatre's season of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and a ''Meet the Messiah'' walkabout at Mount Druitt's Westfield Shopping Centre on Saturday morning, where locals would have been invited to kiss the hem of his garment and bring their sick children to be healed.

''Kevin is deeply sorry to disappoint so many thousands of his fans at such short notice,'' said a statement released by his office in Brisbane on Friday.

''But he has no wish to engage in a popularity contest with Julia Gillard. Talk of a return to the Labor leadership is just that: talk.''

Mr Rudd's supporters in caucus say he is devastated to be missing the Neil Diamond tribute. ''He'd been rehearsing for months,'' said one. ''Big hits like Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show, I'm a Believer, and Done Too Soon. And he looked fantastic in the electric blue spangled jumpsuit.''

Julia Gillard arrives at Rooty Hill on Sunday night for her week of governing in the west. Her spokesman said she was eager to enjoy such typical local activities as a drive-by shooting at Whalan, a two-hour traffic jam on the M4 motorway at Prospect and a stint as head chef at a Bunnings sausage sizzle.

''The Prime Minister wants hard-working Aussie families to understand that it's not just Tony Abbott who can indulge in fatuous and condescending campaign stunts for the TV cameras,'' the spokesman said.

Reports from London suggest Mr Rudd will soon be signed for a leading part in the fourth series of the smash hit TV drama Downton Abbey, this time set in the late 1930s. The show's creator, Julian Fellowes, believes he would be perfect to play Winston Churchill, a turbulent politician discarded by his party only to seize the prime ministership in triumph at Britain's darkest hour.

Mr Rudd is understood to be keen to accept the role.

Mike Carlton