Yes, I’m Talking About the Bureaucracy.

It’s that time of year when we, the citizens of Oz, get to acknowledge the geniuses we have put in charge.

There’s an a compliment there to us, of course, 

I’m talking not about the elected classes, but those who act as a sort of thick foam buffer between you, me and our political class.

Between those whose names we see every three to four years.

Yes, I’m talking about the bureaucracy. 

These are the people who most important, are the folks on the front line when things go wrong, and we need someone to turn to. 

And sometimes they get it so badly wrong, the you. Know, the cure is worse than the disease. 

Not a particularly high standard was set a few years ago by for our brethren in New South Wales..

It was dark and stormy night when the State Emergency Service, a little overwhelmed by demands for assistance, decided it needed to sort serious life-threatening from the merely hazardous, the human wheat from chaff.

Here was the solution, announced on live TV.  You can see the picture now, multiple uniforms crowded behind one microphone, some dude squashed into the bottom corner of the screen, right-hand side, frantically signing in Auslan.

During this severe wind and rainstorm event, those citizens experiencing a true emergency should indicate that to the helicopters flying overhead. 

How? By putting a white sheet on their roof.

This is absolutely true.

The very people trained to save your derriere during a crisis now want you to identify the severity of your situation by having you climb onto your roof, with a white sheet.

This is during a vicious wind-and-rainstorm. 

I’m going to say that again: during a vicious-wind-and rainstorm. 

Now you and I know there’s a strong likelihood a sheet, white or not, will quickly blow away in conditions such as a wind and rainstorm. 

You are going to have to haul some bricks or something similar up there with you. 

If you weren’t in dire peril before now, you, your sheet, your bricks and presumably the ladder you use to get onto the roof… you are now. 

This is absolutely true, this story. Perhaps the SES didn’t think this all the way through.   

Some of you may think that a white sheet suggests surrender, but let’s put that aside too. 

Because here’s some footage of the SES helicopter, on the same TV screen.  A rescuer is being lowered towards the roof of a home. He’s all business, helmet and uniform all the gear. We are saved!

That’s great Bruce.  Doing reallly well.  Here we go, Bruce. Down down down.

Come in Bruce. Bruce? What’s that? Shit. 

The sheet is not white, mate.  Bruce, Bruce, it’s chartreuse, Bruce. Chartreuse.  A sort of yellow-green colour.  Not white, mate.  That’s the problem.   No.  got a bum steer, Bruce.  Not a white sheet, not an emergency.  

Take us out, pilot.. 

And then there’s the news reports the following day, the ABC News. (with some serious editing by me)

117 people in New South Wales have been killed or injured overnight in a series of accidents involving people falling off their roofs during a violent wind and rainstorm that struck coastal NSW in the early hours.  

Another 250 more are missing, believed swept off their roofs while still clinging to sheets they had  been told to put there by the state emergency service.

With winds reaching hurricane force in some higher elevations, it is expected that some of those missing might be found elsewhere. 

Indeed, in this late breaking news, 87 year old Miss Edith Bevan has just landed in Broken Hill, still clutching the 1000-thread count Egyptian cotton sheet she only bought last week on special at Big W. 

Meanwhile, ambulance crews are still working this morning to ferry the injured to local hospitals. Their cuts, fractures bruises and lacerations are  from falls from ladders and off roofs, and injuries consistent with being struck by same bricks that they had dragged onto the roof in order to hold down the sheets as directed by the SES. 

True story.