you have NEVER had it so good, u ungrateful pig

Be grateful, be very grateful, even if your not sure why, just be it. Why, well we wont really ever know until some time after the federal election when its safe to know why you are being so forcefully made to feel grateful, but then thats what elections are for, retrospective collective gasps of fine print gratefullness.

Lets look at the world, we should be grateful that we are not in living in the stunning success of Iraq, where US presedential hopeful John McCain wanders the streets blissfully plucking tomatoes out of the hands of liberated shopkeepers who whisper thank you and slip chocolates in his pockets between truck bombs. Thats one thing we should be grateful for, we are far enough away from the Bush Whitehouse to not have to live on a daily basis with its successes, we can watch them on tv, like terry hicks does with his son, if he were not in solitary 22 hours a day. Im personally very grateful not to have been ever liberated by the Bush Whitehouse, thier track record of competency, planning and lack of corruption, can turn minor issues into major fuckups in the blink of an armed militias payday pickup.

We should be grateful for the strength Israeli Pm Edward Olmert exhibits when he loudly proclaims during a visit by No 3 Bush Fuckeruperer, Condi Rice (u cant say condi without a con) "We have no intention of reoccupying settlements," Mr Olmert said. "We are not now in the process of creating new unauthorised outposts at a time when we want to dismantle the existing unauthorised outposts." While 2000 settlers march past police lines and army garrisons into Jenin to re-mantel a settlement that was dismantled over a year ago. We should be grateful that his strength is so easily brushed aside by facts, it makes for equitable peace when we know that no side is even bothering to try anything other than dueling PR pamphlet diplomacy.

No, lets all be grateful for the fact that our wages are now a mere percentage point below inflation in growth, and by this we are all so much better off, we are all winners and we have never, ever had it so good. Thats what the PM and his workplace relations minister, joe hockey insist you believe, and they have the stats they refuse to release to prove it. Joe hockey stood in front of parliament waving our new found prosperity in all our faces, 1.6% growth in wages, a small fortune to someone on several million dollars a year, as so many of us currently are, and only lagging inflation which sits at the top of the RBA range at 2.9%, and will certainly guarantee us a little more joy next week when the RBA does its hammer in glove routine and lifts the rate another .25% to teach us to love Howard in our own way.

Joe, in refusing to release any other of the myriad accumalated data on AWA's, tells us that it just cant be done, we would be comparing apples to oranges, but still wont divulge what apple pickers are compared to apple pickers, or orangers to orangers. Which is fair enough, what would happen if one year an apple picker picked an orange, chaos, statistical chaos. And how does one measure the happiness level of a shop assistant who has had their wages slashed by a few hundred per week, when clearly they themselves have asked to have their wages slashed and by extension must be happy about it, otherwise why would they have agreed to sign the happyness form. And how does one computate the near orgasmic pleasure one has from the flexibilty of working any old hours one wants, including public holidays and weekends without the bother of needing to cut into valuable family time working out those pesky overtime or penalty rates. Thank big hearted Joe for that incaculable joy, and then sit back and let him bask in your knowing just how good you really got it.

But one thing troubles me, not a big matter, but troubling none the less. If the mining sector is booming, paying workers enormous sums just to sign on and increasing their wages at somewhere around 9-20% per year, just to keep their workers satisfied. And if they are the biggest sector with AWA's, doesnt that mean that the rest of us are in fact most likely slipping backwards at an astonishing rate, having our pay slashed markedly, to achieve a wages growth figure of a measley 1.6%. Doesn't it mean that on my own secret scale, the GGP Scale (good german porn scale) that if we exclude miners and take into account record corporte profits, we are being given a GGP of 1.254 with a shiezen smack of .305. On a close approximation of the GGP in real language, this means that we are being bent over a splintery barrel of watered down schnapps, rogered till we cant stand, then having our boss, loosen his or hers trousers and laying a big sloppy brown carpet of crap over our face. But then its so hard to translate GGP into anything like real language, it is purely a statistical device I use to get my dvd's past the boys and girls at customs without those annoying checks or revealing facts. Much like Joe Hockey and the Howard government, an easy 2.622 GGP's.

So be grateful that those in charge are not so easily swayed by facts or checks or balances or inquiry or interest. Any group that can be so wrong on so many matters over such a large period deserve the chance to finally get it right without the harsh and unfair glare of scrutiny. Iraq would be the democratic paradise we all know in our hearts that it really is, if only nobody looked, if a country descends into chaos and nobody reports it, is it really in chaos, ask the congo.

We should also be so grateful that all of our hard earned tax dollars that helped start nascent renewable energy projects are now paying off, well paying off in terms of the companies are now earning big money and investing big money in China and Europe and Calafornia and ...the list goes on...and on..and on. Without the climate realists in our present government, we may well have had 20% renewable energy right now, sure a few less yellow bellied parrots (and I would sleep sounder knowing that godless killing machine was extinct), and be exporting our technology to the world, rather than doing as we normally do, import our homegrown technologies from countries that can see a good thing when it bites them repeatedly on the arse over a period of eleven (count those wasted years again, 11, 77 in dog years) wasted years of dead and dieing r and d.

We should be grateful, Im just not sure that anyone can see the reason why. So I shall wait till Joe tells me and the PM nods in my humble direction as he feeds off my nascent grateful urges at the next election. Scew Flanders.