Piers Akerman, open letters, the dangers of oxygen, the vileness of greenies and the joy of a good burning

The fat owl of the remove, aka Piers Akerman, goes scientific in his open letter to former Victorian judge Bernard Teague and his inquiry into the Victorian bush fires (Burning issue top's judge Bernard Teague's inquiry agenda (sic)):

Every basic firefighter is taught the "fire triangle" - its three components are fuel, oxygen and a heat source.

No one can do much about the oxygen factor, it's almost everywhere ...

Almost everywhere? Say it isn't so fat owl. Surely you're not talking about the 21% oxygen in the air we breathe each day? Must be talking about the average 1% in water we drink. That's a relief, fat owl. For a moment there I was thinking you might be wanting to ban oxygen from the air as a fire hazard roughly equivalent to the work of greenies, lefties, bureaucrats, councillors, governmental drones and right wing newspaper columnists. 

But if we do ban oxygen, will you join my campaign to strip Australia of all its trees, and turn it into a gigantic mall with hugely attractive car park? I can see a way forward for the economy by manufacturing artificial Christmas trees, which by definition are so much more appealing than crude fire bomb style oz gum trees and should sell a motza once we get rid of all those silly landscape views (the Xmas trees will be made in China of course with entrepreneurial Australian skills added, natch).

So glad you've discovered the ancient wisdom of the indigenous folk - I used to think you had something against them and their mystical ways - but now you've realized they love a good burning, and you have so much in common, I expect that you'll never write a denigratory column about them again. 

I look forward to really getting amongst the national parks with you, burning and slashing and woodchipping the lot so we can get into the concreting and tarring (not to mention a little feathering). Let's not allow sentimentalists and panderers to get in the way of national progress. 

PS Have you had a chat with Christopher Pearson who instead of blaming just the greenies blames tree changer, tree hugging people who want to live in the bush amongst the gum trees? You know ...

Give me a home among the gum trees,

with lots of plum trees, a sheep or two, a kangaroo,

a clothes line out the back, verandah out the front,

and an old rocking chair.

 His idea of gulags, concentration camps for these folks, deserves serious consideration. We could allocate them to Tasmania, and then if the place goes up in smoke, no one would much mind. It might even eliminate the dubious breeding practices the smaller states sometimes employ. Meantime, the rest of us get to go shopping in the mall.