Ethereal

You fell from the sky
Crash landed in a field
Near the river Adur
Flowers spring from the ground
Lambs burst from the wombs of their mothers
In a hole beneath the bridge
She convalesce, she fashioned masks of clay and twigs
You cried beneath the dripping trees
Ghost song lodged in the throat of a mermaid

With my voice
I am calling you

Nick Cave

How did it happen, then? Like that. Watched, always watched, that's how it had felt for a very long time, as he burrowed into the ordinary. Crash landed on the River Aiden, that's how he heard it, not that it mattered, you crash landed on Earth, in the ordinary, all the magic gone, everything gone, the spirits gone, you crash landed on Earth because you were meant to know what it was like to be a mere mortal. And there it was. Limited. Barely able to think. Barely able to feel. Of low IQ. Of low propensity. And the days drifted by in a terrible haze. Melancholy, of course, but deeper than that, the despair that accompanied the ordinary.

And so it was, and so it will be, as they lifted him back up, and everything sang, and the finches, the males bright blue, the girls grey, and another species, rarer, brown flecked, their chests. The birds were smaller here than down south, where the weather was harsher, the winters longer. Here, everything was lush.

And everywhere, coated with new activity. The highways were busy, and getting busier every day, it seemed to him. There had been more than a million extra people in a population of 25 million in the previous two years. The traditional society was crumbling, as it was meant to. And the host population felt under siege, was under siege, as this most arrogant, most neglectful of governments continued on its destructive way.

There was a pall over the country, the same pall in a sense that hung over the country when Albanese's predecessor Scott Morrison was there. That grim feeling of resignation, you know you're being ripped off, you know your country is being destroyed, and there's nothing you can do about it.

But this pall, this smothering cloak of negativity, of lack of spirit, of degeneration into evil, a smothering horror, a deceit, a betrayal, all of this inflicted on the population from on high, well, it was going nowhere. They're both as bad as each other, he kept saying of the duopoly of Australian politics. They will both cheat you. They are both lying. They both only pay the remotest genuflection to the notion of democracy.

Why so profoundly cheated? Why did they bother? 

And all the while he wondered, at the nature of intelligence, its evolution in this most remarkable of ages; everything a transition to somewhere else, something else, here on this remote outcrop.

Surrender now, and forever hold your peace.

MAINSTREAM NEWS

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/12/albanese-has-abandoned-the-forgotten-australians/

Albanese has abandoned the “forgotten Australians”

Redbridge Group Director Simon Welsh was interviewed by Sky News this week. In the interview, he argued that the Albanese government had abandoned the “forgotten Australians”.

“I think what we are looking at here is we are headed now for an election that is going to be defined by the Forgotten people—the forgotten Australians”.

“2022 very much was defined by middle class Australians jumping off the Liberals”…

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/12/insolvency-storm-bears-down-on-australian-households/

Insolvency storm bears down on Australian households

Data from the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA) shows there were 11,644 personal insolvencies nationwide in 2023-24.

ASFA expects personal insolvencies to rise by 15% to 13,400 in the current financial year and a further 12% in 2025–26.

The ASFA report also shows that 49% of individuals who become insolvent have debts of less than $50,000.

ASFA CEO Tim ­Beresford says people renting their homes are particularly vulnerable to being declared insolvent. He added that households will remain at risk of personal insolvency until inflation falls.

“Households and businesses are now under the highest level of mortgage stress and cash flow constraints since the GFC”, he said.