CRITIQUE - TONGUE IN CHEEK

A visionary PM takes on the eggheads (?)

John Birmingham Sydney Morning Herald November 29, 2014

Envy of scientists and ignorance of their work is behind the muted reaction to the slashing of one in five jobs at the CSIRO.

Bloody CSIRO. What have they ever done for us? Besides inventing Wi-Fi and Aeroguard and gene shears? Well? Nothing, that's what. Just polymer banknotes, and the microwave landing system at pretty much every airport in the world. Oh, and distance measuring technology for all the aircraft in flight on approach to those airports. All bloody useless really. Just like that damnable atomic absorption spectroscopy all the drug companies use to develop their stupid life-giving medicines.

Who do these clowns think they are, lounging around in their underpants and lab coats, expecting the poor old taxpayer to mop their enormous throbbing brows and carefully drop peeled grapes into their mouths?

I mean it's not like the CSIRO invented anything normal people would use is it? No, those shiftless, greedy scientists are all about pie in the sky projects like the Relenza flu drug, and Softly detergent and the permanent pleat in your best strides. Who the hell needs any of that? It's useless. All of it. But not as useless as the Parkes Radio Telescope or the rabbit calicivirus. That's right. When the lazy, wasteful CSIRO isn't absently stargazing, it murders rabbits. They deserve to have their funding slashed just for that.