Henry

Source: ABC.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
- Oscar Wilde

Henry used to work for the Australian Cotton Foundation; their industry body; as a public relations expert come policy officer. As a greenie before it was fashionable to be green he cut an unlikely figure amongst ultra conservative farmers; lathering on about the economics of progressive environmental policies. The cotton industry had a filthy reputation as a guzzler of water in a dry continent and had become a focus for environmental disputation. They were an easy target.

The farming families, decades ago now, had taken the government at its words and when officers came knocking on their doors offering them water licenses at next to nothing per year as long as they developed their properties; that's what they did. Mini-empires had been built on the back of the licenses so readily given; and as far as they were concerned their job, their empire building, was a noble cause. The properties had expanded; the outhouses increased in number; the expensive equipment, half a million dollars for some of the huge tractors, littered their properties.

Some of the ultra-conservative Christian families from the US moved out here and established their significant holdings; and the Australians, seeing dollar signs and prosperity under the normally harsh sun, learnt quickly and followed suit.

And then along came Henry, with his funny square face and his piercing blue eyes and his bombastic love of the left; with his streams of vitriol at the conservatives and a love of a good time. How easy it was, in those wonderful days; when everything left was good and everything right was bad; and of course we all wanted to align ourselves with the progressive. Expressing doubt about the mantra could get you labeled a fascist, so instead, if we dared to dwell on why the pack mentality of the left had served us workers so poorly, we kept those thoughts to ourselves.

Even now, as the cult like aspects of the global warming or the domestic violence mantras so beautifully illustrate, there is no room for independent thought amongst the tribal paths of the dispossessed. A man was killed a few months back while watering his front lawn; because some bloke, living in public housing down the road, accosted him and accused him of wasting water. There has become no bigger crime.

Meanwhile, it's flooding everywhere after torrential rains and our utterly totally and completely incompetent Labor government, headed by the hapless Morris Iemma, continues to peddle belief systems which serve us all very poorly indeed.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Personally I'm fascinated by Obama and think Hilary would be a dreadful president; but I've been wrong before.

(CNN) -- With the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries now history, the Democratic and Republican presidential races are still wide-open contests that will force candidates to continue to battle over the next four weeks.

John McCain arrives at a rally Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after his win in New Hampshire.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the big winners in the New Hampshire primary, and the rest of the candidates did not rest on their laurels Wednesday as they began looking ahead to the next primary contests in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina.

Clinton's two percentage-point win over Sen. Barack Obama in the Granite State's Democratic primary, after she came in third in the Iowa caucuses, had supporters chanting "comeback kid" when she took the stage to claim victory Tuesday night.

With 96 percent of the precincts counted, Clinton beat Obama 39 percent to 37 percent, a surprise win as polling going into the night had Obama leading the New York senator by 9 percentage points. John Edwards come in a distant third at 17 percent.