Dear Sydneysiders,
I know it’s hard right now. The future is uncertain, and you’re doing it tough. You’re going it alone, and you’re not sure how it’s going. So, here’s a gentle word of advice from a Melburnian who’s been through it: go the fuck home and shut the fuck up.
Seriously, you’re whining and deadly incompetence is really pissing everyone off. Well, maybe not everyone, but most everyone. And you’re pissing me off enough for everyone.
Last year I was inside Melbourne’s ring of steel. I was inside while my frail and frailing 300 year old mother looked after herself in a rural town. I was inside when she clearly was declining, and when i had to arrange for doctor’s permission to get through the ring. Which wasn’t easy. And then I was with her in a country hospital, with the nurses and doctors navigating Covid procedures, with a beautifully human and erratic mix of compassion and shit-scared rule-following. I brought her back, for a week, when she died. And two weeks later was the funeral, with a limit of ten, and an ad hoc reception in the cemetery pavilion, because everything was closed and home visits were forbidden.
My mother’s story, of course, does not compare to the horrors of others, and her story could have been so, so much worse. She spent her last days with her family, which many did not get to do. But it was bad enough, and it was frustrating as hell.
But through it all, did I, or anyone, blame “Dictator Dan”? Of course not, It was, and is, a fucking pandemic, and when you’re in a fucking pandemic you follow the fucking rules. So, when I see the privileged fucking whining from you selfish Sydney twats, I just want to puke. Fuck you.
You want to blame Gladys? Fuck that. Yes, of course she is a loathsome, irresponsible ScoMoFo-esque conman, backed by shit-for-brains hayseeds. She should rot in Hell. But it’s not just her, and you know it. It’s your whole idiotic laissez-fairground culture which is fucking you up, and fucking us all up. And you know it.
So, please, with all due respect, go the fuck home, shut the fuck up. No one wants to hear anything from you but the sound of your doors closing.
Every day my wife shows me pictures from around Sydney, places like Bondi, where there are just tons of people gathering without masks. Where the fuck are the police.
Everyone takes their lead from their leaders.
But Marty, they now have “the harshest restrictions ever seen in Australia”. The poor, sensitive over-privileged prats. Surely we must shed a tear.
We now return to reality – Sydney, shut the fuck up. Do what you should have done 8 weeks ago. If you had, all this would be over long ago.
You want someone to blame – blame your idiot Premier Berejerklian. She could have made the tough call at the start and it would have been over in 2 weeks. Instead, her huge ego, petty politics and drinking Scotty From Marketing’s Kool-Aid led her to choose a different path. Now we’re all paying the price. NSW, if you feel helpless, exercise your power at the next State election.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Sydney. Melbourne had the harshest restrictions for 78 fucking days last year. We sucked it up for the good of Victoria and Australia. So shut the fuck up, stop shopping for your ‘essential’ jewellery and your ‘essential’ handbags, harden up and just stay the fuck at home.
Among the millions of people in the population, there will always be those who do not follow the rules. This is inevitable: our prisons are full of such people. I wonder whether, in their modelling of the spread of the disease, the health experts include the probability that a certain proportion of the population will not follow the rules.
Speaking of experts, let me assume that all premiers and the prime minister follow the advice that they are given by their experts in health. Let me also assume that the experts in health offer advice based on scientific evidence. Does science vary from state to state?
1. There will always be rule-breakers. The major issue in NSW was that the rules were so vague and varying and half-assed and piss-weak, that there was no message of rules to be followed. It wasn’t the rule-breakers that were the major fuckwits, although they were also pretty major: it was Gladys and Hazzard and Chant.
2. Undoubtedly part of the strategy behind, at least, Victorian’s rules is to set them to be clear, to make the rule-breaking starker, to exactly discourage those inclined to break the rules. The difficulty is when easing up. People are tired, and lockdown is a drag. But Orthodox Jews and Richmond Yobs and Northcote Pseudohippy-Fuckers fucked up, and so we tighten up again.
3. Of course health advice varies, and much of it has been appalling, and much of it has been ignored. But given we have no Federal government, just a bunch of quarter-wit conmen, each state must do what they can do.
4. Fuck Liberals and fuck Liberal voters. With a flagpole.
Re: “I wonder whether, in their modelling of the spread of the disease, the health experts include the probability that a certain proportion of the population will not follow the rules.”
That’s a very good question, TM. I would hope so.
Re: “The difficulty is when easing up. People are tired, and lockdown is a drag.”
That’s the 69 dollar question, Marty. And yes, we’re all tired. But there seems to be a certain demographic that has cornered the ‘instant-gratification’ market and cannot/will not focus on the end-game. That engagement party in Balaclava was diabolical – if the news feeds are to be believed it included *doctors*, and attendees understood and acknowledged they were doing the wrong thing but made a big joke of it. It looked like a gathering of a whole bunch of people who think that health advice and public safety doesn’t apply to rich people. The media talked about the hefty fines – $350,000 or whatever all up. Divided among that bunch of self-entitled turds, that would be spare change at the back of the couch (but at least it might cover the cost of all the resultant contact tracing). The real cost for those rich idiots will be when some of them get infected. Let’s see them yock it up then.
The Balaclava guys (actually Caulfield, I think) are getting punished way more than the fines. The Jewish community is ropeable.
Indeed. I’m sure the ‘Balaclava guys’ are very well known. In tightly knit communities you only need to have one or two infected people to put the whole community at grave risk. And then there’s the reputational damage to the community.