Wet, useless shit

Seriously, if the SMH was any wetter, it would be a dishrag. I can't find a link to it, but in the weekend edition, they had a photo of a drawing from some kids summit somewhere. It was your typically childish drawing, with modern slogans plastered all over it. One called for the obligatory water tank to be imposed on every backyard, another wanted the end of coal mining and the last was a cracker - "higher pay for farmers".

How the SMH can print shite like that with a straight face and call it news is beyond me.

Farmers do not get paid a wage or salary. Farmers get paid for what they grow, they deduct the costs of growing it, and what they end up with is commonly known as a "profit". No, I am not referring to Al Gore. He is a prophet, generally of doom.

There are several ways for farmers to make more money.

One is for them to get bigger, thus growing their income base. But since the supply of arable land is finite, that generally involves buying someone else out, which means a family leaving the land. I'm ok with that, since it beats what happened when my mum's family left the land in around 1930-something. It was called a "Depression" and they lost the lot. Being given a million bucks by your neighbour is quite a nice option if you ask me.

But how the SMH would moan at the prospect of that happening! Tears would be shed for dying towns, banks would be accused of nastiness for closing branches in desolate rural centres, and sob stories would be printed on acres of newsprint bemoaning the distances that kiddies have to travel to school.

But you can't have one without the other.

Another option is to drive down costs. A good way to do that is to import cheap labour from places like Afghanistan and Somalia and the Phillipines and pay them two peanuts and a banana a day.

Oops, can't do that either. Bastards. If you do that, farmers get accused of exploitation.

The last way is to increase the price of what you sell. But everytime the price of a litre of milk or a loaf of bread goes up, the SMH goes ballistic.

Just what the fuck is it that you want? Are these fucking people living with Zebedee on the Magic Roundabout? They're certainly smoking whatever it is that Dougal is on.