"0tterbot" wrote in message

on some level, everyone knows that if the river dies then all the towns
along it are going to die anyway, water entitlements notwithstanding.

I'm so glad you mentioned 'some' level of knowledge. I think I'd rate that
level of 'some' as being very low, even if everyone who spends a small
amount of time thinking about the isue should recognise the truth of that
river 'death'. All the bloody whingers give every appearance of being happy
if it happens to someone else's town, someone else's job, someone else's
farm - in fact anything so long as it's not them or theirs.

there
will always be groups of people who argue voraciously against their own
self-interest (as well as the interests of everyone else) & it's frankly
time to ignore that sort of carry-on in the pursuit of a solution that
helps everyone & where everyone has to change some of their behaviours or
expectations. being ridiculously optimistic at times, i hope to see such a
solution at the end of this process!

philosophically, it completely exasperates me that country people &
farmers especially, long regarded as the biggest whingers the world has
ever seen or ever will, are acting out that stereotype for the cameras yet
again, & cannot gain anything at all by doing that, instead of trying to
participate helpfully & help solve the problems for themselves &
everyone else.

Yup!

i grew up in an irrigation area & there, whingeing is like fresh air or
sunshine, they apparently need a little every day just to be going on
with - it must be something in the water g. (i don't live in such an
area now, & there's not much to whinge about here, except the local
council :-) i am tired of such people purporting to be representative. we
don't live in a world where it's just 1953 every day of one's life - it's
time to move on & make some changes & make real plans for the future.

thanks for listening to me whinge! g
kylie
p.s. i think bob katter is fairly adorable in many ways really,

Splutter!!!! He's as mad as a two bob watch. I admit that is part of his
charm, but he's barmy.

but i also
disagree with the perennial idea (one of his personal favourites) that
"rural areas" are all going to drop dead within weeks without endless
subsidies, special treatment, big water entitlements, gobs of middle-class
welfare, and so forth. if that were really true, the kindest thing to do
would be to let them die, ... which i very much doubt would actually
happen. it is probably past time to call the bluff of some of these
people. the irrigators merely should be going first.

Yup.