Poor Oliver Buckworth!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Anyone who has traveled by air anywhere in the world since the 9/11 attacks has been the victim of the idiotic security measures at airports.

Belts off, shoes off, laptops out, body scan or grope – you know the drill. All useless and ineffective and there, like a lot of other stuff, to give the impression that the government is doing something when in reality it is doing nothing.

And as always the stupid rules are enforced by even stupider people.

So, who is poor Oliver Buckworth?

He’s a 28-year-old Melbourne-based interior designer, a threat to no one, and a victim of the security morons that infest air travel these days.

You see Oliver was on a flight in Australia, on a carrier called Tiger Airways. To pass the time he started doodling in a note pad he had with him.

The doodle said “In a land of melting ice-cream, sandy feet and fluffy bears, how could anybody be fearful of terrorism?” and along with it was a visual pun with the word “terrorismadeup” picked out in different colors to suggest that “terror is made up”. Being an interior designer he also drew a chandelier on the same page.

Now you are probably asking, what exactly was his crime?

Doodling with intent to do what?

Not taking the air travel security farce seriously enough?

Having a sense of humor?

Or just getting bored and passing the time with his note pad and pen?

A busybody passenger sitting near Buckworth reported his doodle to the airline staff, who, instead of telling the other passenger to wise up, took the whole thing seriously. Yes, they were as stupid as the busybody passenger.

Apparently Tiger Airways have a “zero tolerance” policy “towards inappropriate and antisocial behavior” which seemed to include Oliver’s doodle. He said he was writing a sentence about the absurdity of recent fear-mongering statements about the threat of possible terrorist attacks, but it was enough to have him thrown off the plane and handed over to the Australian Federal Police.

To be fair to the police, after doing a background check on Oliver they realized that the airline idiots hadn’t uncovered the next Osama Bin Laden and they didn’t take any further action.

But, choosing not to involve themselves with common sense, Tiger Airways banned him from using the airline again, not that he’d probably want to now anyway.

Well done Tiger Airways, you done Australia proud – I think not!

Here’s Oliver’s doodle, make up your own mind.

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The Stupider People Are, The More They Complicate Things!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Time for a mid-week rant I think.

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You may have noticed from the tag line of this blog that its major theme is to expose stupidity and bureaucracy and hopefully to encourage people to fight against it, rather than meekly fall in line with every idiotic rule and regulation that the bureaucratic morons introduce to make our lives a misery.

It is one of those curious contradictions in life that the stupider people are, the more they complicate things and the more they try to regulate things that require no regulation.

They just don’t understand that simplicity can sometimes be the most effective solution to problems – if indeed the problems they perceive even exist in the first place.

On the other hand, things that do need regulating, like the banksters for example, are left largely without interference.

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The big question is, why do these idiot bureaucrats needlessly complicate our lives? 

Many years ago I figured it out.

They do it to try to enhance their own importance. It’s as easy as that.

Let’s face it, most bureaucratic jobs don’t take a rocket scientist’s brain to cope with them. They are easy and repetitive but if done correctly can be completed quickly and without upsetting anyone.

But the bureaucrats won’t have it that way. Complicate the task is their solution. If they do that they need more staff to help them. If they have more staff they get to be in charge of more people, which makes them more important. If they complicate it even more they might need a whole department. And on and on it goes.

In the business world there are empire builders in all large companies. People of mediocre ability, but with enough survival instinct to create a belief that what they do is useful to the company. 

As time goes on they are able to hide within their little empires inside a company and no one questions if what they are doing is really needed and certainly few realize how dumb they are. It is only once they leave this safe environment that the truth becomes clearer.

I have encountered several of these beasts out in the open and it is not a pretty sight. They are so dumb that they have forgotten how dumb they really are. Inflated with their artificially induced and undeserved stature within their former companies they imagine that out in the real world they are, not just ‘as good’ as everyone else, but ‘better’ than everyone else! Invariably they make a mess of things, but unfortunately they cause a lot of damage, sometimes irreparable, before they are caught on and fired. 

Obviously the same type of people are in public life too. In fact this is where they excel, because here it is much harder to pin down their accountability and fire them. In many cases the people who have the power to fire them are exactly the same types and the last thing they want to do is diminish the size of their own empires.

Have you ever noticed that an average town or city can function quite well and efficiently with a mayor and a handful of administrators.

Yet if you take the same town or city ten years later, while it probably hasn’t changed much as regards size, (only in exceptional circumstances would it have doubled or trebled its population or area), it’s local bureaucracy has more than doubled and trebled in size, probably a lot more. It probably also has an increasing number of by-laws and regulations and to pay for it all more and more property and other taxes are being demanded from the community. Clearly all this additional bureaucracy is not needed. But it is there and will continue to grow.

Why do we allow this? Why do we keep electing people whose only idea seems to be the provision of the same basic services at an ever increasing cost?

Big government, federal government, is even worse.

The European Parliament, for example, churns out regulation after regulation after regulation, about ridiculous things like how straight a cucumber should be or how bent a banana can be and still be called a banana! 

Washington has adopted the same strategy, sticking its nose in things that are none of its business and that only serve to hinder rather than help the people who elected them.

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It’s about time we tried to stop this spiral into disaster.

It’s time big brother and all his little administrators had their noses put out of joint. 

Remember, “Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”,  wherever and whenever you can!

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