When age can, uninvited, link the distant poppy past of The Knack with the all too adjacent Present and come up with a pun, Sir Roger is delighted that there are others still living who appreciate the troubling incongruity of those innocent days and these so shredded ones, and have gone ahead and done something about it and finished it off.
So Sir Roger is relieved that he no longer has to tolerate the unwelcome earworm.
Sir Roger has it on authority from multiple sources that the “Dead Cat on the Table” ploy, most recently fed to and trotted out by Peter Dutton, is the signature work of one Lynton Crosby. Goebbels was also a master propagandist.
What?
Sir Roger is in no way suggesting that Crosby is comparable to or correlated with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, just as Barnaby did with the boats and the beef, Sir Roger just mentioned two things side by side. How dare you suggest that Barnie was throwing a long-dead and rancid cat on the table, or that Lynton Crosby is just as putrid! How very dare you!
ICYMI, what is a “dead cat”?
According to The Spectator :
“ When, Crosby says, you are in a hole or faced with the tricky task of diverting attention away from some unwanted piece of news you should throw a dead cat onto the table. Hey presto! No-one is talking about the bad news; everyone is talking about the dead cat on the table.
Lynton Crosby – sorry, SIR Lynton Crosby (knighted for confusing the British electorate into voting for the wrong set of poncing fools last year) – it is said SIR Lynton Crosby has, as his favourite method of tricking the voting public into voting for the wrong team, the above-mentioned Dead Cat Ploy.
The function of this skullduggery is to cause everyone — including especially the media — to talk about the one thing the party has going for it. The media of course lap it up and blow it up and smear it over everything they own because there are now too few journalists, they are overworked and overwhelmed and they are desperate for an easy story (“what are they saying on twitter?”). And so it becomes the Big Story of the Day, or the week, it reinforces the one issue that does well in the party’s focus groups and turns the media gaze away from issues where the other side polls better.
It is also used to divert attention (and conversation) away from damaging embarrassments.
And what would they not want people talking about?
Well, almost everything. The budget, last year’s budget, the one before that. Malcolm Mansion’s incompetent mismanagement of the NBN, health, education, pensions, unemployment, the economy, growth, unemployment. The “Innovative Society” needed to be hidden after the NBN raid because that just reinforces that if Malcolm is so incompetent that he can’t make the cheap and nasty version cost heaps less than the expensive shiny one then he’s got no chance of pulling off an innovation of any kind.
Then there’s:
. . . to name just a few.
The list of topics they’d rather we didn’t have a close look at includes just about everything – oh, except the Tony Abbott obsession with keeping the brown-skinned people away from our pristine White Australia.
Lynty-baby certainly has his work cut out.
Anyway, Sir Roger hopes that Sir Crosby will be as effective in this election as he was in the recent Canadian election, where his client collapsed in a landslide.
The problem is that the Dead Cat ploy is not a surprise anymore.
The media are onto it like a shark smelling blood at a dog show and are beginning to cover the campaigner and not the issues. More and more people are talking about the sliminess of the liberal party’s campaign strategy and campaign strategist and despising them for trying to play them for fools, or more importantly, trusting them even less than before if that is possible.
The propagandist is in the spotlight when he’s supposed to be invisible, and the ‘valiant hero of the East’, or at least the Eastern Suburbs, is the one who’s supposed to be bathed in the limelight.
Men and Whitlam of Australia . . .
“ T he decision we will make on December 2 is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.
“We will abolish conscription forthwith.
“We will abolish fees at universities and colleges of advanced education.
“We want to give a new life and a new meaning in this new nation to the touchstone of modern democracy
— to liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Yes, sadly
It’s time.
Now is the time to say goodbye.
Now is the time to yield a sigh.
Now is the time to wend our way-eee,
Until we meet again
Some sunny day
Time to bid farewell to a fading myth of the socialist left that no-one under 40 has ever heard of: old plinth-bound, red-taped Goth the Whittler whose soul, vision and legacy are chained and frozen in stone within the walls of the Wiblam Edifice, protected by the Hooded Brethren of the Whitlam Industry (UWS) Inc.
His name was “Goth”, now a legal personage, a mere trademark, hijacked by a “controlled entity” bearing the name of the once terrifying but now sadly faded and hardly remembered mythical hero of long ago.
His time, comrade, was a time of social earthquake, of cultural lightning and of political tempest whose like we shall not see again.
Heralded by fiery comets, bare-chested and thumping did he unchain the creativity of the nation’s sleeping Beast.
With the life-giving elixir of freedom did he quench the crumbling leaves of its dreams.
And “Liberté, Egalité! Fraternité!” was his battle cry. To those who awoke it was as if St Crispin himself were there amongst them.
And the Beast was roused! It shook off the dust of the dead, Mingsian years and romped and played for joy.
But the Beast grew and grew and its liberator, though mighty, was no match for the Beast which became a monster and destroyed him.
The largest stars shine brightest and briefest and explode with shocking spectacle. And are gone.
Their glowing supernova remnants linger for a time but fade and are forgotten.
As Oscar Wilde almost wrote of the Star Child,
“ Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he was destroyed. And those who came after him ruled evilly.”
And they still do, and today they promise to rule more evilly than ever before.
If there is one thing Sir Roger despises it is people who are so far up themselves they can look through the back of their own eye sockets, and who then insist that everyone else take them seriously. Such are the rulers of our day, the Mad Rabbit, Jolly Joe Porker, the Cormorant and the Death Stare.
Yet still a few remember the torpid days of The Beige Oppression and The Monochrome Society during the reign of Ming the Dreadful and his inept successors. And these few who remember know and cherish the bright and cheerful contrast of The Sir Gough Rainbow.
Sir Roger since 1972 has found in every new day a new excitement, a new challenge, a creative opportunity to influence his world for the better and to make it a better, more loving and more humane place – much the way that Gough inspired us all to do and be.
And everyone now has the constitutional right, the moral duty and the precious freedom to do so.
So now to Gruff the farter, Gog the sun and Goth the gruff old goat.
Gough be with you.
TONY BURKE:
The late Cardinal Clancy used to often relate about his conversation with Gough when Gough had inquired as to whether or not St Mary’s Cathedral might be available for a funeral, which surprised Cardinal Clancy given that he was not expecting Gough to convert to Catholicism.
Gough explained: no, no, no, it wasn’t for the Catholic funeral — it was because he wanted to be buried in the crypt, claiming that he was willing to pay but would only require it for three days.
Not Gough in his heyday
J ust (sorry) Sir Roger thinks IT’S TIME to refer back to the recent squabble about certain t-shirts and heap some shit on those who assert ownership of the commonly used English phrase “It’s time”.
Universities once — in all the centuries up to, but not including, this one — were laboratories for learning and thinking, experiencing and exploring. They fostered the free flow and sharing of ideas. They created possibilities. They were machines, hothouses, for ideas, rather than being mainly and merely commercial employment factories basing their teaching on the (safe) theories of the past. (Better the devil you know than the one you might unearth with your damnable curiosity and cause all sorts of uncertainty and, worse, discomfort.)
So when an entity, especially a university, or a “controlled entity” of a university, indulges in trademarks, copyrights and any “intellectual” properties it can get its hands on, what does that do? Well, it prohibits the free flow and sharing of ideas.
It smothers possibilities. And so it steals from a nation.
What is that? wondered Sir Roger, that lives off the rental or hoarding of ideas and goods, or off other people’s work?
By chance he came across a term which describes, or once described, such a person or “entity” — the rentier.
A rentier is a person or entity that receives income derived from economic rents, which can include income from patents, copyrights, brand loyalty, real estate, interest or profits.
Rentier is a term currently used to describe economic practices of parasitic monopolization of access to any (physical, financial, intellectual, etc.) kind of property and gaining significant amount of profit without contribution to society.
The rentier was the ultimate bourgeois, like Helen and Allison.
But then, aren’t we all, or don’t we all aspire to be, rentier capitalists?
At least if we write a book and live off the royalties and movie rights we did the work. But a second, third, fourth, investment property? The profession of such people is idleness.
Sir Roger thinks rentier capitalism is not a core value that one associates with Gough in his heyday. Not even after they turned his marbles into a bust and stuck him on a plinth. In fact ever.
Perhaps that’s why we voted for him.
A s you know Sir Roger has been stood over by the rozzers of the Whitlam Industry, accused of the most nefarious crimes in the most aggressive tones. Almost as terrifying as the big boys threatening him for his lunch money.
To help the dear reader understand the response which follows, here, first, are excerpts from that letter from the Whitlam Institute which was rushed by email, with a copy by snail, under the hand of one “Helen” but actually from the desk of an “Allison” (who knows?). All one really knows about “Helen” is that she appears to be a ‘torturer’, or to put it another way, ‘abominable power point presenter’.
Therefore, in the spirit of that letter Sir Roger’s amanuensis began his reply as follows:
Gosh! Comrade!
This is exciting, isn’t it? To be accused of “procuring”! Sir Roger feels he has at last achieved the heady heights of infamous celebrity enjoyed by Berlusconi and Strauss-Kahn!Who even for a moment suspected that a t-shirt splashed with the ValuesAustralia.com logo could ever be suspected of being sanctioned by the arrogant old codger? Only those who knew that The Great Man’s now immortally corporatised self is also now legally wagon-encircled.
Ought one to turn oneself in to the police tonight? Might one wait till tomorrow? Will one need to pack one’s pyjamas? What sort of a sentence do you think one might get (were you to win)?
One says, “were you to win” because who knows for sure if a judge would find that the (now ex-) t-shirt was “passing off”?
One knows you can’t. Not till the judge puts the black cap on.
Since your concern is to protect the income of the Mighty Whitlam Edifice one can inform you that the Institute has lost no income in this matter. One finds no historic record of a sale of the allegedly offensive t-shirt and it is no longer offered for sale on the Values Australia website or at cafepress.
One hopes you will forgive any language which is not cringingly fearful under the onslaught of your strident, harshly worded and school-marmish threats but, you know, this blog post (series) if it lacked some frisson, some controversy, would be terribly dull and there would be nothing to tweet about. Sir Roger’s loyal fans would be disappointed and it would damage his reputation for robustness.
One hopes indeed that you will understand that this response may contain occasionally non-legal terminology because, as Sir Roger puts it, “IANAL”. And if you are offended, well, you know, you have as much right to be offended as Sir Roger was offended that the letter purporting to be sent by you was in fact sent for you, a task you delegated to someone else, perhaps the office girl.
Who is to know?
I am the nominee of Sir Roger Migently who commissions and is senior adviser to the website ValuesAustralia (hosted in and published from the United States of America with all the implications and complications that entails).
Sir Roger has therefore directed that I endorse the enclosure on his behalf. (You may need to look carefully for the signature towards the end.)
He was shocked to hear that, what with his pension and his gold ticket and all, old Gruff is so short of cash these days that he needs every cent you can get him.
Sir Roger (benighted before Gough changed the honours system) informs me that he had quite forgotten that he had created the sparkling opportunity to ignore the … er … opportunity to which you refer and which apparently no-one saw or – certainly on the evidence and to Sir Roger’s memory – not one person wanted. Sir Roger frankly couldn’t have given a stuff about it, as he says, after the 2007 election. Its time (oops, sorry!) had passed.
So he was shocked when the rozzers from Whittling Inc sent to his amanuensis the terrifying threats of, well, who knows what dire consequences by email! To Sir Roger it felt a bit like being dumped by text (which strangely chuffed him, being down with the kids and terribly contemporary and all).
Sir Roger demands that the forensic team at UWS Legal, should they locate any remaining instances of the offending item, immediately inform Sir Roger who will forthwith speak to his people to have them deleted.
(On a side note, there are on the cafepress website very many other instances of the phrase being used on possibly tens or hundreds of
g-strings
shirts
mugs
cups
caps
dog warmers and
mouse mats,so if you wanted to pursue them – perhaps claiming piracy under extraterritoriality? – the office girl will have plenty of work to do for the next few years.)
Discovery and Observations
You assert that the Whitlam Institute has a “substantial reputation”.
Who knew?
Sir Roger would be one of the more aware people in the community, both generally and politically. He had no idea! A Whitlam Institute? Doing great and worthy works? A t-shirt?
I must say, the UWS marketing unit needs to get off its arse about this one and let the world know that Gough’s spirit lives! If Sir Roger has never heard of it, few others have.
Looking at the Whitlam Industry website now one might suspect it is less the throbbing engine of social justice and democratic advancement one might imagine than it is a back-slapping nostalgia club for the ex-famous and forgotten, a few academics writing impenetrable scholarly works with obtusely academic titles and a fresh-faced legal team jumping out of the legal bushes to surprise the disobedient.
So, trademarks and passing off
“A cause of action for passing off is a form of intellectual property enforcement … particularly where an action for trademark infringement based on a registered trade mark is unlikely to be successful.”
“Passing off … does not confer monopoly rights to any names, marks, get-up or other indicia. It does not recognize them as property in its own right.
“Instead, the law of passing off is designed to prevent misrepresentation in the course of trade to the public, for example, that there is some sort of association between the business of defendant and that of the claimant.”
There are three elements which must be fulfilled:
• Goodwill owned by a trader
• Misrepresentation
• damage to goodwill.
In Reckitt & Colman Ltd v Borden Inc [1990], Lord Oliver stated that a plaintiff must establish all of the following:
1. a goodwill or reputation attached to the goods or services
2. a misrepresentation leading or likely to lead the public to believe that the goods or services offered by him are goods or services of the plaintiff
3. that he suffers loss or damage as a consequence of the erroneous belief that the goods or services of the defendant are the goods or services of the plaintiff.
- A case may be made that goodwill attaches to items for sale by the Whitlam Institute.
However:- As for misrepresentation, not even “a moron in a hurry” (which as you know is NOT the test) would imagine that the shirt prominently displaying the ValuesAustralia logo was an offering of the Whitlam Institute. [see below]
- The website never and nowhere represents (or represented) or if you like misrepresents or misrepresented in any way, or could have, that ValuesAustralia.com was in any way affiliated with the Whitlam Institute or that the shirt was in any way approved by the Whitlam Institute. It would not have been possible to make such a claim because ValuesAustralia.com in 2007 had no knowledge (was, as it now seems, blissfully unaware) of the Institute’s existence at all or of its commercial offerings.
ValuesAustralia.com never knew, or in its wildest dreams could ever have imagined, that the two words “it’s” and “time” placed side by side, in dictionary order, were or ever would be, or for goodness’ sake ever could be trademarked by anyone.
- It is as impossible to demonstrate as it is silly to suggest that the Whitlam Institute has suffered or could have suffered loss or damage as a result of any confusion over the shirt’s provenance. As far as the writer knows no shirt was sold except for the one bought by Values Australia itself as a proof copy in 2007 and the person who bought that shirt (oneself) was, absolutely certainly, under no misapprehension whatever that the shirt was represented as a product of the Whitlam Institute. No person has ever contacted Values Australia with any question concerning the shirt’s provenance. Until now.
There never was any intent to deceive nor any intention to obtain a gain or cause a loss at the expense of the Whitlam Institute.
There never was any misrepresentation made and nor there was ever any intention in the course of trade calculated to injure the business or goodwill of the Whitlam Institute. No damage could be imagined probably to be caused, none was caused, and now certainly none can be caused in the future.
To make this point clear, I wonder if you would take a moment to view these two images and decide whether you can tell them apart, remembering that the test is not “a moron in a hurry”.
They have been placed side by side for ease of comparison). Can you tell which is which? Are you sure that the shirt on the right is not an offering, or representing itself as an offering, of the Whitlam Institute?
[Images considered fair use for this document as exhibits in a legal context]
How can you tell?
The “moron in a hurry” is a term in case law:
It appears to have been used first by Mr Justice Foster in the 1978 English legal case of Morning Star Cooperative Society v Express Newspapers Limited [1979] FSR 113. In this case, the publishers of the Morning Star, a British Communist Party publication, sought an injunction to prevent Express Newspapers from launching their new tabloid, which was to be called the Daily Star.
The judge was unsympathetic. He asked whether the plaintiffs could show:
a misrepresentation express or implied that the newspaper to be published by the defendants is connected with the plaintiffs’ business and that as a consequence damage is likely to result to the plaintiffs and stated that:
“if one puts the two papers side by side I for myself would find that the two papers are so different in every way that only a moron in a hurry would be misled.”
So any possible confusion by a “moron in a hurry” is insufficient to find for the plaintiff.
S ir Roger (or at least his amanuensis) was harried recently by the legal department of a minor university which happens to accommodate a “controlled entity” bearing the name of a once terrifying but now sadly faded and largely ignored (for those who lived in his time) or unknown (for those born after his time) mythical hero of long ago. His name was “Goth”.
His time, comrade, was a time of social earthquake, of cultural lightning and political tempest whose like we shall not see again.
Heralded by fiery comets, bare-chested and thumping did he unchain the creativity of the nation’s sleeping beast.
With the life-giving elixir of freedom did he quench the crumbling leaves of its dreams.
And “Liberté, Egalité! Fraternité!” was his battle cry. To those who awoke it was as if St Crispin himself were there amongst them.
And the beast was roused! It shook off the dust of the dead, Mingsian years and romped and played for joy.
But it grew and grew and its liberator, though mighty, was no match for the beast which became a monster and destroyed him.
The largest stars shine brightest and briefest and explode with shocking spectacle. And are gone. Their supernova remnants linger for a time but fade and are forgotten.
As Oscar Wilde almost wrote of the Star Child,
“ Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he was destroyed. And those who came after him ruled evilly.”
And they still do and today they promise to rule more evilly than ever before.
And so the fabulous beast was drugged by the Hooded Brethren and encased in a concrete bunker called The Institute. Emblazoned above the portal was the name of our hero, “Goth the Whittler”.
The Hooded Brethren, in fear that the monster may reawaken, administer to the beast, in its concrete bunker, their witches’ brew of soporific drugs while chanting incantations from the pages of The Magic Laws and remember the long gone, real gone stompy wompy songs of yesteryear.
So it was that one day the beast groaned in its sleep. The Executive Hooded One was summoned. The runes were cast. The skies did she interrogate for signs. And she turned with dark and flashing eyes and said,
“ Send out the Pages!”
At the old witch’s word were unleashed the snarling, barking, pissing hounds with eyes as big as saucers and mill wheels and towers. To their backs were bound the sacred pages of The Magic Laws and away like Dapto Champions they rushed to an unfortunate person’s humble abode to deliver the dreadful Laws and threats.
And that ‘s how Sir Roger got them really.
More or less.
His amanuensis was more shaken than Sir Roger, having had to answer the door and face the slavering beasts in person.
The Laws were brimstone-hot to the touch and covered in slimy slaverings and piss but one’s amanuensis unbound them and read them and considered them and laughed and laughed and eventually brewed up some ink, raised the quill, and fashioned a response on finest e-parchment which he attached to the still-waiting canines.
If there is one thing Sir Roger hates above other things it is bullying.
If there is one group of people he despises it is people who are so far up themselves they can look themselves in their own eye sockets, and who then insist that everyone else take them seriously. It is those attitudes and this type of person that Sir Roger believes his amanuensis was forced to address.
Sir Roger has seen it.
He thinks it is a nice piece of nasty work, and if not his best then perhaps quite close.
Why is this story titled, “A Moron in a Hurry”?
He will share the answer to this and other mysteries with you in A Moron in a Hurry – Part 2.
