Plague Update #17 - To Golf or Not To Golf

I ended a weekend of bleak isolation staring at the walls of my dimly lit apartment and was relieved to get back to a week of bleak isolation staring at the walls of my dimly lit apartment but also working.  The pathetic joy with which I greeted the resumption of my pseudo productive activity is an indication of how deeply scarred this lock down has left me.  Ever the devils advocate Tristan the Puffin insists that he has witnessed all of those psychological scars for years and the lock down hadn't really changed my life at all.  In a rage I threw him out the window, then ran downstairs sobbing hysterical apologies and gathered him up before the pigeons could seize their chance.

As you can see I appear to have entered into a co-dependent and disturbingly abusive relationship with a stuffed puffin.  The abuse isn't only one way either, not all my scars are psychological.  We've considered therapy but have decided to see if we can work through our problems with the aid of narcotics and alcohol.  So far our success has been mixed but we're determined to keep at it.

But back to the reasons for my spiral into addiction and madness.  The crucial questions just keep coming.  Down in Victoria people were incensed to discover they were no longer permitted to play golf.  Speaking personally I don't actually need a reason not to play golf but these people were greatly wrath at the fact that they couldn't wander across an erratically tended lawn hitting a small ball with a long stick.  They've got a point.  After all exercise is permitted and there can be fewer games less conducive to social gatherings than golf.  Nevertheless the Victorian government stood firm saying something along the lines of "We'd rather ban golf than have to dig mass graves for the populace".  In my own state golf is still permitted for anyone who can take the time out from digging mass graves.

One of the nation's major airlines (not the one with the kangaroo, the other one) has been begging for government handouts with increasing desperation while our government has stood proudly firm and announced they are looking to the market for a solution.  Like most conservative governments ours doesn't really comprehend that "the market" isn't a benevolent all seeing god with a touching solicitude for its worshippers.  Rather, it is a cold blooded psychopath whose sole interest is in the benefit that can be gained for itself.  In fact the only people who understand the market less than a conservative government is a Labor government but they at least have the excuse that they're not meant to.  Which is why the market's solution turned out to be waiting for the airline to die then tearing strips off the carcass.

But that was our federal government.  The state governments of NSW and Queensland were almost indecently eager to throw money at the beleaguered airline as long as well...  The airline is currently based in Queensland and the Queensland government promised it a bucket of money as long as it promised to stay there.  Not to be out done the government of my home state NSW promised it even more money if it would move to NSW.  This produced a bit of a slanging match between various representatives of the two governments that at least took everybody's mind off infectious diseases and corporate collapses for a few minutes.

In grim totalitarian news our government took time out from eagerly waiting for the market to piss money on our airlines to promote the micro chipping of the population.  OK that's a slight exaggeration (hey if you want real news get it from Facebook like everyone else).  What they wanted to do was get everybody to download an app that would allow the government to track COVID-19 cases or something like that.  The response of the population (including me) was underwhelming.  At first it was going to be mandatory, then voluntary but with the easing of restrictions tied to uptake of the new app and finally the government declared that we could download it or not as we liked, it didn't give a shit.

The usual promises were made that our data wouldn't be stolen or misused and that people absolutely couldn't be hunted down by government death squads if they voted the wrong way in the next by election but it was to no avail, the public weren't buying it.  Wisely in my view. Of course the data will be gathered and almost certainly misused.  In claiming to the contrary the government is either lying or (to be fair, equally likely) simply speaking from well intentioned ignorance.  Still the app won't be mandatory and people's private data can rest safely in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos where it belongs.