Good God, when you’re Miranda Devine you don’t want to begin an op-ed piece with an image of a plane on autopilot. But that’s what she did, to talk about bureaucracy. Bureaucratisation is just like a hi-tech pilot’s cabin, she twittered.
It obviously bloody isn’t, it’s the opposite.
The problem with hi-tech is that humans simply become a cog in an ahuman process, the problem with bureaucracy is that it makes humans the process.
The image is interesting, because the article feeds the Right’s dominant fantasy – whether it’s talk of the nanny-state or of big bureaucracy, they are the folks who will come in an restore plain common sense. Reagan is always quoted and Devine does not disappoint with a few words from the great afternoon-napper, whose saying ‘the worst phrase in the world is “i’m from the government and i’m here to help” ‘ kinda stopped being funny at Katrina.
Trouble is, federal public service numbers and spending went up under Reagan (and under Thatcher) at a faster rate than under Carter. As they always do – for the simple reason that they never have the guts to really slash in (and when they do, and cause social mayhem, they have to increase the numbers of cops and prisons and laws anyway).
What’s even better is Devine’s example of creeping totalitarian bureaucracy – ‘try getting your passport renewed at the Neutral Bay post office’. Apparently they have some sort of standards regarding photos or something, which the counter guy can’t relax just because he knows you. I mean what’s the world coming to you’re trying to get home to write your 129th article on how we need to have stricter border security and the bastards won’t let you use a photo from year 8. It’s enough to make you say ‘don’t you know whose daughter I am?’
The Right can’t think about these problems – and they’re real problems – properly, because it would mean giving up their ideal self-image. So they cling to it, and sound like Ayn Rand on acid, and never evolve an argument about how we manage increasingly complex societies in a complex, but less overbearing way.
But hey Miranda keep playing on your laptop – unaware that the airport was a coupla hundred clicks back thataway.
8 Comments
what a steaming pile ms. devine has dished.
she lumps all the foecal cliches together – all the right’s altar favourites for the sacrifice – the UN, the bureaucratic airlines putting those handsome “highly intelligent’ pilots to sleep, verbose queenslanders that dare to be PM, jargon, state rail, health and safety, paper shufflers that you can recognise in pre-adolescence (like boy scouts and railway ticket inspectors) who are drunk on the power of clipping your ticket, communism (ooohoo), the CPRS (because its all just a beat up), the CSIRO being gagged (hmm that sounds familiar, didn’t the other guys do that too?) the 2020 summit and my personal favourite
“he believes in one thing – that systems and processes can solve any problem, that if you have enough meetings, summits, talkfests, reviews, studies, probes, resolutions and facilitations, preferably with some connection to a United Nations body, solutions will miraculously occur without hard decisions being made. As Rudd’s disintegrating policy on asylum seekers demonstrates, this approach rarely works.”
If I am not mistaken – Rudd has kept this asylum seeker thing out of the meeting rooms, talkfests and studies’ which is probably why he has botched it by trying to be heavy and compassionate at the same time – any senior advisor could tell him – but he is not talking or listening. So what is Devine referring to when she connects all this plop together?
Herself.
Just like her dear old Dad, she has a following based on “call me stupid… but what is that supposed to mean?” Vile pandering to the consumption defined late majority.
Rundle you broke the first rule of warfare in the battle against the Trollumnists. Don’t read them don’t comment don’t give them any oxygen.
Having said tat your comments were funny. The image of Madam devine having her Belinda Neal don’t you know who I am moment in the neutral bay post office was fine indeed and saved me from having to read the column.
“Ronald Reagan is the prototype of the new mythological American, a grinning whore who will probably someday be President.” – Hunter S Thompson, 5 February 1965.
Dear Guy,
I wonder if the “right” (e.g. low IQ conservatives) know that just because they’re called the “right” (e.g. the literal religious) that it doesn’t actually mean they’re right (e.g. correct). In fact, on most issues the right’s (e.g. mostly News) commentators are so wrong I wonder if they know anything at all. Could it be that simple? Would explain a lot, would it not! Has anybody bothered to ask? Or explained this to them! Or, do they think that no one notices their incongruent statements. Could it be an un-diagnosed psychosis of some kind?
A. Howard Battler, NOT!
The comment re the passport ID controls is priceless. Something to file when the next column about poor immigration controls or anti-terror is posted
When I was an arts student, and thus a proto-leftist in training, I worked in uni admin part time. My job was scanning in photos of external students so they could be then turned into photo IDs meets the barcode for use on campus when the students came to town.
The form we sent out was pretty clear. Portrait shot, face on, face and eyes unobscured. You know, like in a driver’s licence.
For would be members of academia you would not believe the clown shots we got in. For example Dckheads cutting out a photo of them at a barbie, holding a pair of tongs with a snag on it in front of their face, whilst not only wearing a terry towling hat, but giant Jackie O sunnies.
Poor old Miranda. It’s kind of funny how she’s all anti public service. I bet she was one of those far righers that thought the only legitimate people on the public teat were those that protected property – cops and the army. Everything else should be outsourced.
Then … the GFC came.
It’d be hilarious if it were not for all the normal people hurting. You know, people 100% unlike Miranda Devine.
http://mirandadevine.com/
Brilliant
What a crack-up Guy, and thanks for saving me from reading another tedious stream of Miranda’s drivel.
And talking of “Ayn Rand on acid”, you can’t go past her recounting of the night Howard lost the election, (and most deliciously), his seat:
Baume’s theory is that Howard has worked himself out of a job. The aspirationals who voted for him in 1996 and remained loyal through four elections “have achieved the great bulk of what they aspired to,” he said.
But then they wanted more, And “if you don’t get three cars in your garage rather than two, you’re p…ed off with someone”.
Dame Leonie Kramer agreed. “Once you start aspiring you never stop,” she said.
(Night of blue believers
Miranda Devine at the Wentworth Hotel
November 25, 2007 )
…let them eat cake!