Ah, to have the gift of selective recall, that of being able to write history without letting awkward facts get in the way, thereby creating a parallel universe where anyone can be a hero – especially the writer.
Can you guess that I’ve been reading Ruck Tosser’s Saturday Star? Yes, I again recently found myself in one of those masochistic moods that sometimes assail me and which leave me unable to do what’s in my best interests: wipe and flush. I just have to check Ruck’s latest creative efforts.
Ruck starts off in the April issue complaining about red tape re Byron Shire Council’s budget process. He laments that the 200 pages of inscrutable tedium that councillors have to read represent a ‘poor return on ratepayers’ funds’. Ruck is of course highly familiar with wastage of ratepayers’ funds; he was a dominant figure associated with the 1992–93 Eastcott administration that managed to pay over $9 million for a council chambers that should have cost under $3 million; which illegally signed over money from the sewerage fund to the general fund (and blew it) and generated a $7 million deficit that took nearly 20 years to rectify. Besides that he also voted to prosecute me over the 2000 doof, which cost the council around $100,000, and he has voted consistently to support secret debates about my and other properties.
I should point out that Ruck is much better at predicting the future than he is in recording the past. Middle of last year he was able to predict that I would probably get my multiple occupancy re-validated. Nice of him to be thinking of my particular case, isn’t it, him being so busy and all. But maybe he just got the shorthand version from the staff. Pity he was unable to persuade them to just write me a letter confirming the fact so that I didn’t have to waste $2,000 going to court over it. I’m sure he tried really really hard.
Fast Buck$
Coorabell
