The naming of natural disasters

Apart from a pressing need for an amendment to its ‘beautiful one day, perfect the next’ self-styled motto, Queensland needs to go buy itself a state-wide lotto ticket, because it has, for the most part, narrowly avoided being completely scuttled by TC Yasi.  Yasi, or the Banana Crop Murderer as I like to call her, is one of the manliest sounding cyclone names we have come across in a long time. Which isn’t difficult when you are comparing it to Larry or Tracy.

I know the people who name natural disasters are just trying their best, and are probably more concerned with the meteorological side of weather things that blow up a fierce gale, but who the heck thought Larry, Katrina, Bianca and Anthony were appropriate names for these monsters created out of mother nature's fury?

I suppose the really important point to remember is that celebrities don’t get the opportunity to name them. Or else we would have ‘Hurricane Pomegranate’ by Gwyneth Paltrow, 'Tornado Bluebelle Sweet Nectarin' by Bob Geldof, and ‘Tropical Cyclone Princess Plush Pillow’ by Michael Jackson.

Apart from the obvious similarities in personality traits and disposition, natural disasters resemble children in other ways too; that is, someone has to name them and someone has to pay for the damage they inflict on society and the environment.  Hmm, who has to pay for natural disasters in Australia? Oh wait, that’s us taxpayers.  Which we are more than happy to do.  But just when you thought those bucks would be covered through your annual taxes...

Our fearless and rather stupid Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has whipped up a whole tornado of bullshit by deciding that Australians need to fork out for a ‘flood levy’, to pay for the wet and wild ride that devastated Queensland a few weeks ago. 

Our Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, in opposing the PM, decided to fight the levy, and called for donations to set this in motion. Yes, the former is in charge of running the country and the latter is supposed to be holding the other to account, but that's no fun when there is a cyclone to exploit and much natural disaster politicking to oversee.  As usual, I had the lowest of expectations and I'm still disappointed.

Maybe there is another solution.  I have noticed that big whopper companies love to show their philanthropic streak when times are tough for Aussies. So what if we allow these companies to sponsor natural disasters (eg. Tropical Cyclone McDonald's Angus Burger), and the trade off is that they pick up the dry-cleaning bill?

Then we wouldn’t have to pay the stupid levy. It’s a two-pronged effect – they raise awareness of their company whilst looking like they care about the public and the environment. In my defence, I haven’t thought this idea through at all.  But that excuse seems good enough for our PM and Peter Garrett and the other hillbillies who are supposedly governing the country, so it's good enough for me.

Also in my defence, I haven’t been elected by the people to stop the country running into bankruptcy, and it’s also not my responsibility to prevent a situation where the electorate are needing to take on second jobs to pay for natural disasters, which we rather ignorantly assume are covered by our normal taxes.