Alca Pone

How yesterday could have been a slow news day is a bit of a mystery: Labour Party Conference, Bluetongue Disease, The Special One? Yet in the face of all this stout competition The Big Country regularly made news bulletins. Normally this happens on dreadfully dull days or in the aftermath of the most recent thumping handed out to the representatives of England by one or other Australian side.

But ... at the end of a week when we'd also failed to make the final in SuperSilly Cricket, and when we're only keeping pace with the Kiwis ... space was given over to a 'major' story emanating from the other side of the world: not sending the army into the heart of darkness to solve the many social problems besetting the isolated, impoverished and under-educated communities living there, but rounding up the dole-bludgers, lay-abouts, long-haired dope smoking hippy freaks and communists that are a blight on far too many of the nation's most desirable costal real estate.

These beaches are beautiful, therefore it is entirely inapproapriate that they be populated by the sort of people who tend to cohabit without being married and more generally dispense with the proprieties as Little John sees them (ostentatious church going, voting Liberal, tax evasion, wearing a suit and tie).

Something must be done, particularly in a week when John's mates have been caught running a Smear Unit without John's permission and using real life criminals to pose as 'criminal' unionists in a series of anti-union advertisements - this has subsequently been described as method acting [Method acting is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate real life emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance.]

Just in time the Government has found a soft target and with an election looming there are just two chances it will stop kicking any time soon.