Amidst all the chest beating and teeth gnashing that is our National Health Service Doctors have once more pressed their claim for an across the board pay rise.

Doctors, it seems, have become the forgotten casualties in the Medicare health crisis. There has been no uniform wage rise for at least six months, morale is low, and worse still people are becoming involved in preventative health.

“It’s a disaster,” said Dr. Angelo of Southport. “Just as lawyers and judges need criminals, Doctors need sick people. And we’re getting less of them. I hate them,” he muttered bitterly, speaking of people embracing preventative medicine. “As far as I’m concerned these people are traitors. They should take their incense and chakra sticks and fuck off!”

But the Doctors’ crisis goes deeper than this. Sullied by the Doctor Death scandal, driven to bankruptcy by the Medicare fiasco, and ground into the most abject of poverty from rising golf membership fees Doctors have never had it worse.

“The Admin’ staff at my clinic are calling me Doctor Zoidberg! Ok, ok, I’m not eating out of dumpsters – yet – but the day’s not far off. And do we get any coverage from the Press? No! Just bleeding heart stories about little old ladies who’re circling the drain and can’t make their pension stretch to cover a coronary bypass. Boo hoo! I devoted six years of my life to becoming a doctor. How long do sick people devote to becoming sick to warrant such media attention?”

When asked what he thought the government should do to remedy this situation Dr Angelo replied, “Number one, outlaw all these hocus-pocus alternative therapies! They’re killiing us!”

“Is that because they actually work?”

Dr Angelo declined to comment further.

‘Unseasonable cold has devastated crops!’ announced farmers in Southern Queensland today. Readers, we hope, will remember the farmers of Western Queensland issuing a similar statement with regard to the drought. In fact the same excuse was issued by farmers in North Queensland after the cyclone Larry disaster.

Michael M, world renowned conspiracy theorist, believes this is more than a happy coincidence. “It’s easy to blame the weather for every price increase,” said Mr. M. “This has been going on for the past three years.”

The conspiracy, according to Mr. M goes like this: At any particular time a farmer has some barren land. This is because of crop rotation. After intensive farming the land is fallow. It is then left so that it may replenish the nutrients lost during the previous harvest. While this land is rebuilding itself the farmer rotates his crop to other plots.

“So what we’re now seeing,” says Mr. M, “are farmers waiting for any kind of weather abnormality or extreme. When it occurs, as it invariably must, they sell a story about how their entire crop is decimated. News cameras are shown the fallow land, which they assume to be indicative of the farmer’s entire crop (which it isn’t), and the farmer then hikes the price on his real/ hidden crop blaming it all on the extreme weather.”

There is no doubt farmers up and down the eastern sea board have been regularly complaining about weather abnormalities for the last four or five years. “What happened before then?” asks Mr. M, “Extremes of weather have always been with us, it’s the nature of an unstable system. Put simply, every farmer since the beginning of time has had to fight random and inclement natural factors, more often than not these factors have been very extreme. However, it is only in the last three years that such factors have been used to defraud the public and enable the avaricious few to profit from our gullibility.”

A number of Australian men have bought a class against Tampon maker Carefree. The class action alleges Carefree has deliberately and maliciously engaged in false and misleading advertising leaving Australian Men with a warped understanding of the female menstral cycle. This inturn predisposes them to dangers of psychological, emotional, and, on occasion, even physical damage.

“My God, are those ads misleading or what?” Group leader Sheridan Levi-Jones told The Yowie. “I mean seriously, the chicks on those ads seem to greet their period with a thrilled sense of wonderment and excitement. It’s as if it is the greatest time of the month. They are all frolicking in the ocean, matching the tampon with their shoe color, happy, cheerful, and carefree.”

This, Mr Levi-Jones claims, is as far from the truth as one can get. It is a “text book case” of false and misleading advertising.

“Seriously, frolicking at the beach? Are these people for real? Where are the random, explosive changes of emotion? The tears? The sudden, inexplicable changes of tact? Where are these things? Not in any bloody Carefree ad I have ever seen!”

The suit claims this has caused many young men to disrespect a woman’s ‘time of the month’. Iin extreme cases to treat it with a disdain. This can, and has, led to life impacting relationship troubles.

“Many young men, on moving in with their first female companion, simply don’t understand the immense horrror that is: ‘that time of the month’. This leads them to inadvertently make rookie mistakes, like suggesting a trip to the very same beach at which the ad models frolick.”

The fault, Mr Levi-Jones claims, lies squarely with tampon and pad manufacturers. Especially Carefree! “If your sole source of information on menstruation was a carefree ad you would be seriously warped,”Mr. Levi-Jones tells the Yowie.

Even the Company’s name, he contends, is misleading. “Carefree? Carfree my arse! They should change their name to something more realistic like Emotionallyvolitile, Pronetotears or Apporachwithcaution.”

The case is set to go before the courts early February.

Trevor McNobody, an I.T. graduate from Griffith University on the Gold Coast has launched legal action against the Australian Government for disaster relief. “I finished my degree in 2002 just as the I.T. industry collapsed in this country. Market forces and consumer sentiment conspired to create a condition in which my skills were, for a time, unnecessary.”

However, even then Mr. McNobody knew that given time the market and customer confidence would return to normal. “All I had to do was wait it out. I used the time to my advantage, but it was still difficult for me because the circumstances were beyond my control.”

Mr. McNobody got the idea of suing the Australian Government for disaster relief after seeing millions of dollars being given to weather affected farmers. “If these farmers can be given stacks of money for hardship beyond their control then shouldn’t we all? There is absolutely no difference in principle between the weather affecting the agricultural industry and market forces affecting the I.T. industry. We both suffered, therefore we both should be compensated.”

Mr. McNobody’s hearing is scheduled for the 2nd of December.

Performance art, Dear Reader, has fallen to a new and horrifying low. Read on and hear the worst of it.

Milton Friedman, the economist regarded as the father of the modern economy, died last week at the aage of ninety one. His contribution to the world’s understanding of systems of wealth is beyond adequate description.

His theories contributed to some of the ways in which modern governments control interest rates and inflation within their economies: He advocated increasing the amount of currency when times were bad; thereby devaluing otherwise expensive items and easing interest rates and inflation. And reducing the amount of currency during times of abundance; hopefully breaking an inflationary economy before interest rates spiral out of control.

Since his death tributes have poured in from around the globe. Politicians, financiers, noted academics, impoverished hobos from every country have paid tribute to the man who, more than anyone of this time, shaped the notions of value and quality of life in today’s world.

Not to be out done, (and here the full farce of our artistic impoverishment is revealed) the Gold Coast Arts Centre is hosting Ari Liondike in his tribute to Milton Friedman. I kid you not! Liondike has put together a ‘riveting’ two hour mime on the basics of Keyensian economics and the outstnding triumphs it has produced.

How he reduced it all to two hours is anyone’s guess.

The show plays Monday through Thursday each week until January 15. Matinees for the kids on Saturday and Sunday are special affairs, with fiscal face painting, economic rationalism merry-go-rounds, and political pie throwing.

Hurry, tickets are subject to supply and demand.

No conviction was recorded against marketing giant Kraft-Masterfoods in todays case before the Brisbane High Court. Queensland Health had accused the multinational of breaching basic health guidelines, specifically within its Cooporoo cannery. In a long running, and often bitter legal wrangle, the facts were only fully disclosed with the defenses final submission.

Queensland Health originally brought charges against Kraft-Masterfoods because of the sensational testimony of whistleblower Petunia Roberts. Mrs. Roberts husband, Cyril Turner Roberts, had confided to his wife on several occasions an overwhelming drive to put his ‘dick in the pickle slicer’. Mrs. Roberts pleaded with her husband to seek help for his fetish. Mr. Roberts, however, refused to accept responsibility for his psychological dillemma.

Things reached a head (so to speak) on the afternoon of 21st of February when Mr. Roberts returned home from his job at the Cooporoo cannery sheepishly telling his wife he ‘had something to confess’. Mrs. Roberts testified to hearing her husband tell her that day he had ‘put his dick in the pickle slicer’.

On 23rd February Mrs. Roberts provided Queensland Health with an affadavit reproducing her husband’s testimony. On that and subsequent occasions Mr. Roberts showed scant regard not only for his own well being, but also the well being of the wider community.

Pickles canned at the Cooporoo facility are transported throughout Australia. Queensland Health were horrified that such a gross breach of health regulations was treated by Kraft-Masterfoods in such a disdainful manner. “We cannot understand why there was no public recall,” says Janet Howitz of Queensland Health. “As soon as we had Mrs. Robert’s submission we demanded the Courts intervene to protect the Australian community.”

Kraft-Masterfoods spokesperson Leanne Walton, however, says consumers were in no way put at risk. “Upon the situation being uncovered Mr. Roberts was sacked.” The problem, as lawyers for Queensland Health so robustly argued, was not with Mr. Roberts, but with the distribution of the food that had passed through the pickle slicer. “Oh,” Said Ms. Walton, “she was sacked too.”

A special diet is being forced upon all members of the Federal Labor Party, according to a leaked memo today. A labour Party think tank has identified a number of entirely new demographics within the Australian community.

Previously Australian demographics have been divided into the aged, single mothers, various ethnic groups, battling families, and pathetic, lonely, middle-aged white guys (who are the mules turning the entire economic mill).

However, all that has now changed. According to today’s leaked memo people are now to be identified with what they do rather than with what they are. This has, in turn, led to an entirely new approach for Labor in presenting itself to the wider community.

The entire Labor party has been exhorted to go on high fat, high carbohydrate, high sugar diets in an effort to court, what is now being termed, the ‘Fat Vote’. “The writing was on the wall,” a Party insider told the Yowie. “We should have seen this long ago. Television shows are almost equally divided between cookery programs and weight loss shows. The Australian community is obsessed with food and what food does to you. Our objective then is to identify with this public trait and thereby have the Australian public identify with us.”

“The demographic has always been there, it’s only now we’re learning how to work it. Imagine watching Alexander Downer sweating it out on The Biggest Loser! Or having Peter McGauran (Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) showing you how to bake a Platypus Pie. It’s a shame Kim Beazely has gone. With what we know now he’d have been our ticket to securing the Fate Vote.”

Identifying people with what they do rather than with what they are was, in fact, originally used by Pauline Hanson. “Despite her shortcomings the woman could spot a mob ready to be exploited.” Ms. Hanson hopes to be swept back into power by courting the ‘Dancing Vote’. This constituency is formally identified as couch potato losers who live their lives vicariously through Dancing with the Stars, Australian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc, etc. And while they might not do any dancing of their own, they identify with the contestants who do. “And it is this niche identification,” continued our insider, “that we aim to exploit.”

Always one to spot opportunities, dumped Minister for Immigration Amanda Vanstone has combined the two and begun belly-dancing lessons.

Who writes this shit?