Dec 152006
 

Bannerman works from home. It’s a tough life, but someone has to do it, and Bannerman figures it might as well be him that adroitly avoids the peak hour crush; the over-powering scents of perfume & after-shave in the morning; perfume mixed with body odour and beer-breath in the afternoons; the ant colony-like streams of people into & out of train stations or the inanities of evening radio chat shows on the freeway.

Bannerman trots off to the ‘office’ at the back of his abode around 0830 hours each day to settle in behind the notebook screen with a coffee and Radio National for company. It’s rare to have the serenity of the moment shattered by the telephone, but today it was. Who might it be, but the local member, Andrew Laming. Personally, no less! The reader might recall yesterday’s post where Bannerman took issue with Mr.Laming’s insinuation into B-man’s letterbox of Liberal Party political claptrap. It seems Mr.Laming doesn’t get a whole lot of feedback to his communications with his constituents. That much is obvious, if he seizes upon Bannerman’s email, as copious as it was, and responds before 9:00am the morning after it was sent. Bannerman hadn’t even finished his first coffee or properly checked the emails and Mr.Laming was in his ear!

It seems the thrust of Mr.Laming’s mailout campaign was to seriously promote his initiative, Red-e-vol, which he spoke quite animatedly about from the perspective of what did Bannerman think, what constructive critiques did he have, what about the online aspect, database privacy, etcetera. Bannerman was quite honestly flabbergasted. The long-winded quasi-political slap up the ear ‘ole seemed to strike the right chord with Mr.Laming, even if only from the perspective of creating a realisation that community oriented, non-profit ventures administered from his electoral office could quite easily be construed as yet more conservative ideology, especially when accompanied by the seven seperate horn-tooting pro-Howardian glossies as it was.

Bannerman isn’t under any illusions, however. Community volunteer schemes which encourage the retired or semi-retired individuals, those with children off their hands and spare time on them, to become more involved with aid, community service, environmental protection and similar organisations IS current conservative ideology, as detailed in this piece of Liberal Party propaganda. Mr.Laming is being somewhat disingenuous in claiming Red-e-vol is a non-political initative. The simple fact that it’s organised and run out of his electoral office speaks volumes in itself.

Bannerman would be interested in hearing from the reader should similar party political paperwork masquerading as community volunteer aid programs happens to roll up in their letterbox. Address your responses to bannerman@waddayano.org .

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