VAPOUR TRAILS – PART THREE
And all this occurs
in a society where the official rhetoric from politicians, police and public
services tasked with the business of exposing and addressing crime, systemic
failure, misconduct and injustice encourages victims and witnesses to come
forward and speak-up. In reality, they are instructed to remain silent, and
punished if they do not. And the news media, instead of speaking for these
victims, too often twists facts into stories for profit, or wastes air-time on
their own with idiotic celebrity pieces.
A news personality
has a car accident while racing around in their leisure-time and it gets days
of coverage. Another one, a man portrayed as a devoted husband and father, is
chastised for a drinking problem that flows into his job on-air and then gets
caught out having an affair. Does he lose his job? No. Admittedly, he also has
a history of getting ropeable when women, kids and the disadvantaged are
treated badly, when there is an injustice, but his efforts are undermined by
his questionable behaviour, his shattered integrity.
Perhaps, if he
demonstrated some kind of public contrition for his poor behaviour he could
regain some of what he has lost. His efforts would gain more traction. We do
not know the full story. Only what the media chooses to share. What we do know
is that his kids are caught in the middle. That his wife was humiliated. That
he continues to date a much younger, very attractive woman with wealth and
celebrity status of her own and it plays out for the world to see. This story
hamstrings all the good he could have done.
But then there’s
Shane Warne, one of the most disgusting people on the planet who shags skanks
across the globe and then adds further shame and humiliation to his wife and
kids by mocking her and telling her to “get over it”. Unlike the former
personality who made selfish choices and hurt people, Warne seems to take some
kind of perverse pleasure from his actions, as if he is entitled, as if it’s
his right to bully and harm his victims. He gets regular work with Nine, too,
as if his opinion is worth anything at all. And all this from a station that
claims to support equality for women and anti-domestic violence
initiatives.
But it doesn’t end
there. The comedy-sitcoms of the 80s and 90s are long gone. They were replaced
with the kind of mindless, vindictive, psychotic reality television that has
eroded what little remained of moral and ethical values passed on by many of
our grandparents. Big Brother, Australian and American Idol, Master Chef, Married
at First Sight, and all the moronic conflict in the commercial renovation shows
have replaced the notion of individuals working together to overcome adversity
with competition, where any kind of nastiness goes in an effort to satisfy
self-centred desires at the expense of others.
The only thing
better than all the bitching, whining, backstabbing and scandal of the conflict
of television soaps, it seems, is watching it impact on real people. The
unhinged people that watch this drivel justify and take joy in every nasty act,
pleasure in the suffering of others. They will defend to the death the very
worst excuses for humanity because they are conditioned and enabled to do so
and lack the intellect to be anything more than what they are.
But when they are
confronted by the few reports of that kind of drama in the real world, or
someone asks for their help because they are suffering that kind of injustice,
they respond with derision. They insist that kind of thing doesn’t happen in
the real world. They assume the victim is a liar. They insult, mock, blame, and
heap further hardship on those seeking help and support. Why? Because those
nasty individuals are the kind of fools that argue two-plus-two is five because
some bigot celebrity or politician tells them so, and shout smarter people down
because they misunderstand the whole “carry the one” concept.
But education is no
guarantee of anything better. The recent moaning of over-privileged arseholes
about changes to Super funds for the excessively wealthy has revealed that.
They whine about how the changes will negatively impact thousands, ranting their
complaints while wearing gold watches in mansions filled with expensive
furniture and trappings. They are displeased that they stand to lose a small
percentage of a shitload more than their less fortunate counterparts who
survive on the poverty line because they did not have the same advantages
during their lives.
Pricks who launch
their tirades and tantrums to gripe about having only five-or-more times what
others have after the changes, that $1.6M was not enough as pensioners lived on
just $50 a day. Bone smuggling douchebags that attack the Minister while she’s
on maternity leave using rhetoric that indicates they hate children and, let’s
face it, anybody that isn’t them, even as they dismiss criticism for doing so. These
very same people then have the audacity to bully the un- and under-employed
into silence over the legitimate concerns about cuts to Sunday Penalty Rates
and sadistic, draconian, Human Rights violating policies inflicted on the
unemployed who survive on just $37 a day, barely two thirds the official
poverty rate.
One idiot that stood
out among the crowd by going above and beyond in levels of arrogance and
stupidity was a fool named Ivan. He chose the unique path of painting those
with incomes capable of funding the kind of Super-scam of $1.6M or more as not
just victims, but heroes, while the less fortunate were a parasitic burden
those heroes carried. According to Ivan, those on higher incomes pay so much
tax they fund the lives of multiple aged pensioners and bear the burden of
contributing the most to society.
What Ivan’s tiny
little brain failed to realise is that it is those people he considers heroes
(himself included, there can be no doubt) that are the burden on society,
parasitically hoarding wealth as they live lifestyles of which the vast
majority can only dream. The taxes these over-privileged, arrogant,
self-centred leeches pay are nothing compared to that paid by those on a lower
income: using actual dollars paid means nothing until you consider what dollars
a person has before and after they pay taxes.
Someone on a wage of
just $55K a year will receive $5K in Superannuation. They will pay almost $10K
in taxes. The poverty-line is $18.5K. If they have a partner who is one of the
current 736,000 unfortunate to be under governments who fail to create
sufficient positive employment opportunities, the two subsist on an income
barely above this. Even the most frugal spending will see that entire income
consumed in rent or mortgage, insurance, utilities, transport costs, and basic
groceries. Add one or more children and folks with even half a brain will
realise the situation is suddenly one of escalating poverty and stress.
Now let’s have a
look at Ivan’s heroic victims struggling to survive on their $1.6M plus
Super-scams. To get that after even an extremely fortunate extended employment
history of fifty years they will have needed to put away about $30K a year in
Super. At 9%, their income would have to be at least $300K a year for the
entire time, unless they make concessional contributions from their own income.
This is only possible if they are receiving an income in excess of about $100K
a year, and only spend money on basic necessities. But they don’t. They tend to
live very expensive lifestyles, so for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume
they have an income of around $200K a year.
The taxes on an income of $200K are around would have been around $55K, assuming they actually did pay them instead of using tax evasion techniques, like concessional contributions into Superannuation accounts. That leaves $155K to live on for the year, the same as what about eight pensioners, or twelve unemployed people, must try to survive on for the same period. The taxes can then be off-set by making contributions to their Super, redirecting the taxes they pay into their own future. Not into funding the less fortunate. And Ivan has the arrogance to claim the burden on the wealthy isn’t “fair” and the less fortunate have no idea. Clearly, Ivan is a dickhead.
Those heroic victims
bitching and whining about the loss of the lucrative tax concessions that allow
them to live in gilded palaces, while the less fortunate they consider
parasites live in the gutters below, are now a thing of shame… or would be if
those heroic victims had a decent bone in their bodies. What they contribute
back into society through their most reluctantly contributed taxes is nothing
compared to the cost of what they suck out simply through their own repulsive
existence. The few among them who actually contribute to society in a positive
way, and agree with the policy changes rather than unleashing a barrage of hypocritical
snivelling, offer hope for the future, but are tainted by the repellent
majority that do not.
While those
over-privileged scum float at the top in a world insulated from reality,
claiming the thousands disaffected and outraged by long-overdue cuts to the
tax-system that has helped increase their wealth will lead to the downfall of
the LNP, they are completely oblivious or indifferent to the millions
disaffected by the fascist ideologies that strip funding from social services
and the less fortunate. It is the self-absorbed, narcissistic, twisted
attitudes of the over-privileged and idiotic, that vile stench that is the
entrenched culture of corruption that will actually lead to the downfall of the
LNP and modern Western civilisation.
It is because of
this despicable culture that we now have a population infected by the
ill-educated idiot ideologies of arseholes whose personal wealth is only
exceeded by the excesses of their depravities. What impact does this have on
communities? What does it do to the victims? How does it enable the predators?
How is it that unhinged, self-absorbed, repellent ‘people’ like Ivan and his
ilk are able to move around in society inflicting their idiocy without
repercussion or corrective education?
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