The Honourable Member

Sometimes in the afternoon, when he's not having a "nanna nap" my male staff listens to the radio. Actually, he calls it a wireless, but until recently it was a radiogramme. Does anyone else on the planet listen to the radio in the middle of the afternoon? Surely everybody has an MP3 or is it an MP6 these days. Who knows? I can't keep up, and neither can my male staff. He thinks an iPAD is what you wear after a cataract operation. He never listens to music on his wireless either, only the ABC news station which has earnest sounding men and women blathering on about the economy or some documentary about capybara ranching in Peru. It's fascinating stuff, and my male staff sits there nodding sagely as if he actually understands a word of it. His listening preferences are so outdated that at any time I expect to hear Winston Churchill's voice booming through the speakers. "Never...in the field........of human conflict etc. etc.

This afternoon he was listening to a programme about unruly school kids, at least I thought that's what it was. There was much jeering, yelling, juvenile jokes and making of rude noises, and above this din the teacher was trying to make himself heard. "Order! Order!" He was yelling, and becoming quite hoarse. It was then that I realised that it wasn't a secondary school class full of slightly intellectually challenged kids I was listening to, but Question Time in the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament. The guy yelling "Order! Order!" wasn't a teacher at all, but the Speaker of the House who was desperately trying to regain control of what sounded like a riot. He was shouting things like.

 "Will the Prime Minister get off the table, put her clothes back on and resume her seat."
 "Will the Honourable Deputy Leader of the Opposition help the Honourable Leader of the Opposition back into his straight jacket.
 "The Honourable Member for Wattawanka will immediately stop punching the Honourable Member for South Stench."
 "Will security please remove the Honourable Member for Great Donga once he has finished shagging the Honourable Member for Deadshit West."
 "When the Honourable Member for Little Barstead has completed his rendition of Working Class Man will he please place his empty whiskey bottle in the recycling bin and resume his seat."
 "I'm not going to continue until the Honourable Member for Kowabunga has finished urinating in the despatch box."

Yes folks. These are the people who make decisions about your future. Not mine, obviously because I'm a guinea pig and as such am not really effected by any of this. I do feel sorry for you humans though. You have a government so poor at communicating that it could make a fifty percent income tax cut look like bad news, and an opposition so addicted to the lowest common denominator and short term populism that it makes One Nation look courageous and far-thinking. Anyway, Badger and I don't care as long as my staff keep supplying the lettuce.