Yes he was perhaps the Piers Akerman of the left and could be a bit grumpy and crazy at times (I have seen this first hand and can attest) and yet. When I read "First Abolish the Customer" at 19, it was a political awakening, a fundamental shift in my consciousness, and it set me on the political path I continue today, and my enduring hatred of the stifling parasitic cancer of economic rationalism. (Studying social science, then social work, at university, I think I have referenced that book in every essay I've written). And so it went: Ellis's words and books have been there to illuminate and enlighten every major political event in the nearly 20 years (dear god, so long) since, the proudly defiant Ellis shelf on my bookcase.
And now he is dying, and it feels like the pending loss of a grumpy uncle. perhaps, whom you nevertheless had great affection for, and the liver cancer he says will kill him means he will never see the end of the Abbott government. Not here to make his predictions and divine pronouncements, not even to see his personal nemesis Bronwyn Bishop get the justice that must be coming. Not here to inform, infuriate and amuse.
And I feel like crying, and I never would have expected that.
And so it goes.
And now he is dying, and it feels like the pending loss of a grumpy uncle. perhaps, whom you nevertheless had great affection for, and the liver cancer he says will kill him means he will never see the end of the Abbott government. Not here to make his predictions and divine pronouncements, not even to see his personal nemesis Bronwyn Bishop get the justice that must be coming. Not here to inform, infuriate and amuse.
And I feel like crying, and I never would have expected that.
And so it goes.
