The Outsider: Probing Adelaide’s obsessions
This week, The Outsider proposes alternative boutique festivals, ponders the plummeting worth of our electricity assets, and examines the grammatical intricacies of off-colour lyrical similes.
The sausage in the forest
At first, The Outsider thought “The Body in the Garden” was a reference to our Sunday morning ritual of picking up the Mail and waking the inebriated soul sleeping under our apricot tree.
But no – it’s a “boutique” festival combining crime writing and gardening.
Very Adelaide – domesticity, murder and a chance to sip Riesling in the Botanic Gardens. And wear a big hat.
We think the concept has merit and should be extended.
Hence, we have been brainstorming alternative festivals to “fill out” the sparse bits of our yearly events calendar.
You might like
Hiding the Sausage: a joint celebration of artisan smallgoods and the sport of orienteering in Mt Crawford forest.
Toad in the Hole: Spelunking and traditional British cookery, concurrent with the international conference of herpetologists, in the South-East.
Fly in the Ointment: Learn how to make your own homeopathic remedies and fishing lures, in a glider, while being massaged, at Blanchetown.
Tan me hide when I die Clive: Fine leather work, the poetry of Clive James, and the history and philosophy of taxidermy in the historic surrounds of Centennial Park.
Like a metaphorical virgin
The Outsider could talk for hours about the differences between simile, metaphor and allegory (hyperbole).
Which makes it very disappointing that people have been talking about a bad taste “metaphor” in the new production of Shane Warne: The Musical (incomplete sentence).
Eddie Perfect, playing Shane, sings a racy song about getting it on (euphemism) with the ladies while on tour.
Stay informed, daily
The song’s breathtaking climb to the top of the mountain (metaphor) peaks with a reference to a part of Warney’s anatomy being “like a dingo with rabies eating your babies”.
The audience took breath as one – some brave souls laughing, others silently gaping like sideshow clowns (simile). But the real outrage happened afterwards, when people started Tweeting and talking about the “metaphor”.
It’s like the character of Simone Warne was an allegory for the audience’s educational achievements.
We’ve got the power to win
It’s 13 years since the State privatised electricity assets, and used the several billion dollars to pay down State Bank debts.
The move was strongly opposed by Labor in Opposition and then Upper House independent Nick Xenophon.
Since coming to Government in 2002, Labor Ministers have sometimes been asked “if you hated the sell-off so much, why not buy the assets back?”
The response has always been, “too expensive”, “can’t unscramble the omelette”, and, behind the scenes, “we love having the option of blaming the Libs for high power prices”.
State Budget papers from around the mid-2000s suggest that such a move would have cost a minimum of $3-$4 billion.
Yesterday’s Budget shows it’s getting cheaper – so much cheaper, in fact, that a power buy-back is starting to look like a goer.
In its list of risks to the State purse, it notes under the heading “Electricity entities”: as part of the former government’s privatisation of the state’s electricity assets, the government provided certain specified undertakings to the lessees. In the extremely remote event that these undertakings are not enforceable and the leasing arrangements are terminated, the state is required to make specified payments to the lessees and would receive the associated electricity infrastructure assets in return. Gross exposure: Gross exposure: $2 billion at 30 June 2012.”
That’s a reduction from last year’s figure of $2.3 billion.
At that rate of reduction, when does it start to become a reasonable proposition?
Anyone for a power network buy-back scheme?
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
