Granville loses its MP and a true account of the mean streets of Clyde

As if there wasn't enough terrible news in the world today, Granville's state MP Julia Finn has stepped down from the NSW Shadow Cabinet over branch stacking allegations.

I am not happy. This leaves those us Granville residents without any voice at all in the NSW Labor Shadow cabinet. It is a big blow.

It's no coincidence that these allegations come at a time when powerful forces have made clear their desire to silence Granvillian voices.

I personally give no credence at all to these allegations. I've never met Julia Finn but I do know Granville. Manipulating the rules of the NSW Labor Party to inflate your local branch membership so as to gain political advantage is simply not what we do here. 

I've lived here for over a year and I've never seen any branch stacking. Either the branch stacking happens very discreetly or these are straight up lies by those whose anti-Granville agenda is well-known.

Some will say that now, at least, Julia Finn has more time to spend tending to the needs of her constituents, no longer distracted from high flying, high stakes world of the NSW Opposition's cabinet meetings. Maybe. Who knows, she might even find time to recruit actual humans to the local branch now. Anything is possible in these unprecedented times. 

Now I am Granville till I die. I have "2142" tatooed across my heart.

But... well with all the heat we've been getting with this unseemly branch stacking scandal (I've heard property prices have dropped) ... well I thought there can't be any harm in checking out the neighouring places. Just to take a look.

And so on this day I set out to do something I had never done before. I would walk eastwrds to Clyde Train Station and there, I'd cross the train lines to the northern side, and walk streets of Clyde.

This was as far as I'd ever gone before:

On the other side was unknown territory. Forget branch stacking, did they even have Labor Party branches?

I walked forward with trepidation. I had to stop half way across to gather my courage.

It was when I began my descent on the other side of the tracks that I began to grasp just why these streets had such a notorious rep:

Look I'll not deny the sign caused me pause. But it takes a bit more than the threat of entering Kelly Country to scare me. I used hangout with the Kellys' back in the day. In fact I was known as the "Fifth Kelly", like with Stu Sutcliffe and the Beatles, only I didn't die of a brain haemorrhage but was kicked out of the Kelly Gang for excessive drunkardness. Which, if you ever saw how those bastards drank, you'd know was an achievement.

Anyway, if you walk closer you can see those red splatters on the wall aren't actually exploded blood splatters at all. They are actually just leaves! Look:

So I made it. I walked a free man into that barren wasteland that lies just east of Granville and west of Auburn.

I have seen more welcoming places to be honest.

I have read that as the suburb is just industrial these days, and no one actually lives in Clyde any more. Having seen how mean Clyde's houses are, I'm not surprised.

And I don't know what Clyde is hiding, but security is out of control! This place is protected by a flying jeep driven by a ghost child!

And I don't know what they dump in this body of water, but it's called Duck River and I didn't see a single duck. It's very suspicious.

Still, you can get all your cement needs met in Clyde, so it's not all bad.

But the strangest thing I noticed about Clyde was that, while in Granville the berries on our trees are red or sometimes green, here the berries were purple.

Or yellow.

This was very unnerving. It was the strange berry colours that convinced me something was not right.

I had to get out, I moved quickly, not raising me head to notice what I can only assume were an increasingly bizarre array of colours, like brink pink or off-white with magenta spots.

Finally, I made it back onto Granville land and headed straight to safety.

At the end of the day, whatever problems Granville faces, I think I am far better here, where it is relatively safe. Plus it turns ot the Granville elctorate takes in a large chunk of Clyde anyway.

Still, a nice day.

Leaked minutes of Labor backroom meeting on how to win back voters trust

[This is now also available to read at Green Left.]


What with the whole Rudd debacle, sparked by the whole Gillard debacle, Labor has been staggering from one crisis to the next. Time for some fresh and bold thinking!

First, give "faceless man extraordinaire", exposed US embassy source and NSW Right factional hatchetman Senator Mark Arbib the boot.

But then... who to fill Arbib's senate seat? Well, I mean surely it can't be *that* hard being the headkicker of the NSW Right. As far as I can see it means drinking insane amounts, eating lots of Chinese food and yelling at people a lot, so I waited faithfully for the call up.

Mark Arbib has been sacrificed, losing his job of getting drunk, eating Chinese and yelling at people



But ... who could possibly take on Rudd's old job of flying around the world annoying the locals by being wordy, smug and essentially useless, while having an out-of-control inflated self of importance?

My sources have leaked to me the minutes of the emergency meeting among Labor's factional chiefs in the back of a Canberra pub that came up with the answer.


---

"Fucking jesus, who we gonna install into this fucking senate seat/foreign minister vacancy that has any hope of winning back the punters?"

"I know, let's install an arrogant, smug, out of touch washed up ex-leader who wasn't even elected."

"But Paul Keating already has a job."

"Really?"

"Yeah, his hands are full building Packer's new Casino."

"Fuck. Then we're screwed."

"Hang on..."

"What?"

"What about..."

"Who?"

"You know... think about it!"

"No, oh no. No, now come on. You are just being ridiculous."

"Yeah, sorry. Fair enough. I am sure we have bucket loads of options the voters will love. Let's see... um..."

[Ten hours later]

"Sigh. Who's got Bob's mobile?"

---

Seriously, like, what the fuck? Bob Fucking Carr? How am I going to reassure stressed out people now I can no longer use my tried and tested "Hey don't panic! It's not like Bob Carr's our foreign minister!"

This is like watching a surrealist film by Salvador Dali only, to my great disappointment, without any eyeball slicing. I am waiting for them to announce that in other news, Rolf Harris has been given small business and sports and recreation's gone to a possum Wayne Swan found in his backyard.

The fucking bastards! Being ‘noticeably drunk’ is not a crime! It is a legitimate lifestyle choice!

Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am, to say the least, slow to anger.

Generally speaking, I am pretty laid back. Little bothers me.

Carlo “Serenity” Sands — that’s me to a tea. It sure takes a hell of a lot to get me worked up.

I have always taken as my touchstone the advice offered by my good friend V. I. Lenin of how to proceed when faced with people who disagree with your historically correct analysis and prescription: “Patiently explain.”

But even “Carlo the Calm” (as I am popularly known) has his limits.

Sometimes, something occurs so blatantly outrageous and unjust, such a violation of what any decent person holds dear to their heart as the very essence of humanity, that, I, yes even I, get really fucking angry.

What could possibly upset the equilibrium of such a profoundly balanced human being as Carlo Sands?

I can barely bring myself to type these words. Tears of anger and sorrow roll down my cheeks.

The NSW government has launched yet another crack down on drinkers.

In it's latest assault on our fundamental rights, NSW police (famous the world over for their sobriety) have been given increased powers to tackle the scourge of alcohol consumption.

The law has been changed so that the point at which police can arrest you has been lowered from being “seriously drunk” to “noticeably drunk”.

Now, the original law was bad enough.

I mean, who the fuck wastes their time drinking if they are not aiming to get seriously drunk?

What the fuck is the point? If you are not going to take your drinking seriously, get out of the fucking way at the bar!

But noticeably drunk???

For christ sake, do these lunatics think people consume alcohol because they have run out of Bushall teabags?

Why the fuck would anyone waste their time and hard-earned cash drinking booze if the effects were not even noticeable?

If you can't notice the effects after a drinking session, you haven't been doing it right. You need to get back there and fucking drink some more!

Let's just look at the potential consequences of implementing a law that makes it a crime to be “noticeably drunk” in Australia:

Parliament would be emptied by the constabulary. All journalists would be rounded up and interned. English backpackers would face mass arrest. Footballers of all codes would be pre-emptively detained.

Now, I know what you are thinking: sounds pretty fucking good.

Yes! But because they are all noticeably arseholes!

Booze has nothing to do with it.

You want to pass a law declaring it a crime to be seriously, or even noticeably, an arsehole in public, then you've got my vote. The above mentioned groups would all be rounded up and hauled away, for the undoubted betterment of humanity.

But leave the great mass of us honest drinkers alone.

Let's just think about some of the consequences of this new law a bit more. If it was applied consistently, across the board, there could be disastrous consequences.

For one, The Shannon would never be open — what with bar manager Paddy's endless cycle of arrests and court appearances.

Every 15-year-old in a park on a Friday night with a bag of goon would end up in jail — just for taking it upon themselves to go out and learn some of life's important lessons.

In short, as my protest placard intends to read, Australia is noticeably drunk.

Apply this law across the board, and all of civilised life in this god-forsaken island would ground to a halt.

And surely our benighted rulers are not that stupid?

That is, could it be that actually this outrageous law is not intended to be applied to all, or even the overwhelming majority, of NSW citizens?

Well, some cynics have suggested such an interpretation.

Yes, it seems that this law is, in fact, just yet another way for the upholders of law and order to kick the most downtrodden even harder.

Thalia Anthony, a law lecturer at Sydney University, pointed out: “New laws giving police the power to move on people who are slurring their words will cement a long tradition of criminalising Aboriginal people for public order offences.”

Anthony explained: “History shows indigenous people are most likely to be caught by this type of legislation and incarcerated for the mere appearance of intoxication.

“The move-on laws have the peculiar flavour of targeting people who are not committing a crime or even suspected of committing a crime. They are activated where people are deemed drunk.”

Such outrageous laws are not unprecedented, and neither is their consequences, Anthony said. ”The discriminatory policing of drunk Aboriginal people is blatant. Indigenous people are 42 times more likely than other Australians to be in custody for public drunkenness.

“In 2005 the Australian Institute of Criminology identified public drunkenness as a key issue relating to police custody. In October 2002 it found that of those detained by police there were 17 times more Aborigines than all other groups.”

Anthony concluded: “Through its move-on slurring powers, the NSW Government has provided another back-door means for incarcerating drunk Aboriginal people ... It is another sad attempt to criminalise indigenous behaviour rather than criminal activity.”

So that is the story, eh?

What a bunch of racist scum. And to think, they would use booze as their weapon to attack a people already largely destroyed by ongoing colonisation. Such an innocent thing used to such evil ends.

But I say, we don't have to accept this.

The Indigenous people have never stopped resisting. They have never ceded sovereignty over this land, and they continue to raise their demands for justice.

I say we follow their example.

I hearby call for a campaign of mass resistance to these patently ridiculous, outrageous, absurd and outright racist law.

I call for a mass civil disobedience in a Day of Drunken Disorder throughout the state — bring it to its knees.

Personally, I hearby pledge, as an act of protest, to be noticeably drunk at all times until this law is repealed.

Being noticeable drunk is not a crime, it is a legitimate lifestyle choice.




In the worlds of Chicago-based band Bondo : “Fuck you I'm drunk, fuck you I'm drunk! And I'm gonna be drunk till the next time I'm drunk!”