Where is the oberbulbenfuhrer?

It's been four days since I wrote to the oberbulbenfuhrer (Malcolm Turnbull) and still no response. His staff must be getting slack.

I will have to write again this weekend and suggest that he sends them out to the parade ground for a bit of marching up and down. Discipline must be learned. When I was a spotty young scribe, writing cockroach letters for a living, the deal was that all letters must be acknowledged by return post on the same day. That meant the morning was spent sorting letters into two piles - those that could be answered immediately, and those that required a bit of time to pen a considered response. The latter were dealt with via an acknowledgement letter, which at least meant that the loony tune that wrote in could be assured that their stinking pile of pustulent gibberish had arrived at the office of their MP.

My greatest innovation back then was to produce a book of templates for responding to all the mad letter writers. I found that about 20 templates covered most eventualities, and it was a silly thing to do as it made the job dead boring. Before my templates, you could fill your working week with hand crafting responses to 93 different types of stupidity, and still have work left over to carry over to the next week. The section had a reasonable number of staff, and they sat around all day drinking tea and composing letters that would put Shakespeare to shame.

Then this freshly minted newbie arrives, mechanises the work and compresses 40 hours of toil into about 4 hours of processing. It was around then that I became a serious solitaire addict, as I needed something to fill about 6 hours per day. Drinking was also useful, especially at lunch.

However, there was always the odd letter writer that sent in something so strange, no template could cover it. These letters were cherished by the section, and would be viciously fought over to see who could do the reply, simply because it would allow that person to sit there and stare at the ceiling for 6 or 7 hours without rebuke. The excuse being, "I am thinking of an appropriate response".

And appropriate responses were crucial. A response had to be polite, make meaningful jestures, but promise nothing. Kind of like Bill Clinton in an envelope. When I got there, I promised things. My boss of course reviewed all my letters before they went out and soon beat that out of me. Nothing could be promised! Write nothing that will generate a reply to your letter! Put nothing in the letter to which a counter-argument can be pinned! Leave a warm, fuzzy glow!

The most shameful days were when someone got our response, and then wrote to us again, pointing out some inconsistency, or demanding further action - or heaven forbid - wanting to talk to someone! Our first response would be pored over as we scoured it for clues. Surely we promised just enough meaningless action to shut them up? Are not our arguments sound and irrefutable? Did we somehow mistakenly include a phone number on our response?

Generally, the state of the penmanship would give the game away - and most of the letters were hand written, rather than typed (this was in the age before PC's). If the letter was written in pencil on a scrunched up bit of paper, the author was probably nuts, or elderly, or both. Good reasoning on our behalf would not divert them from their holy mission to inflict this or that on their fellow subjects. I always wished for a big red stamp that said, "NUTTER", which we would vigorously and liberally apply to their letter before sending it back unanswered. But unfortunately, our political masters were too polite for their own good.

Which takes me back to Turnbull. He's known for firing off feisty emails. I wonder if I'll get a rocket?