As if to taunt the dry, burnt earth, the heavens have begun opening, extinguishing fires in some places and causing flooding elsewhere. It has ever been so in Australia - there are poems written about it - but there are changes also. There is something in the sheer volume of fire, the gigantic dusts storms and the length of droughts, that hints rather strongly at climate change in progress.

In Australia, it is the habit of some especially mediocre fossils to rise to the top in politics nowadays. It is common enough also for them to make the most egregious excuses for doing very little or nothing at all. The only thing they do care about is the economics of things, something they know only a little about but have much to say on. Jobs figures, economic growth, budget deficits, surpluses and the like make them sit up like meerkats. This the real stuff of governing a nation.

The economy has always been an aspect of government, but its elevation to all and everything is aberrant and irresponsible. It is a fetish that needs to be resisted. There is a kind of obscenity in it - a fire almost feverishly fed and tended even as the timber runs out. And bugger what is over there in the shadows!

Out of joint, the times, I say.