Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake on May 30, 1431 for her defence of Orleans during the Franco-English Hundred Years’ war.

Accused of cross-dressing and heresy she was but 19 years old and was later recognised as a Catholic saint for her martyrdom.

Guido Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plotters were discovered on November 5, 1604 in an attempt to blow up England’s parliament at the Houses of Westminster,

They were sentenced to be drawn backwards to their death by a horse, their heads “halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both”.

Their genitals were then to be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed.

They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become “prey for the fowls of the air”

Sensing a sticky end, Guy sensibly leapt from the scaffold on January 31, 1616 breaking his neck, though his mortal remains suffered the predicted judicial indignity.

Perhaps it was no coincidence when on this November 5, the 412^th anniversary of Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot, the Australian Greens Joan of Arc tweeted: “It’s ironic that Abbott is promoted as a hero because he fights fires because he has made fire risk intensity worse by axing climate policy.”

Abbott’s folly in Christine Milne’s clouded view of the world was to fall from a NSW Rural Fire Service truck while serving with his local volunteer Davidson volunteer brigade fighting bush fires at Sydney’s Castle Cove.

But wait, there’s more.

Abbott’s failure to accept Milne’s Green Party nonsensical global warming drivel caused the blazes so it serves him bloody well right!

Or so Milne claims.

Milne is a Tasmanian, the state whose tragic record of ferocious bush fires is likely to be repeated, particularly if the Greens illogical policies are enforced.

The Greens were spawned in Tasmania by the incongruously named Dr Brown.

Reality plays no part in the Greens strange logic.

Bushfires have historically ravaged Tasmania though in recent memory those in 1967, 1981, 1983, 1992, 1998, 2009-2010, 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 caused particularly severe damage.

Perhaps it’s not coincidental that the most recent severe bushfire summer holocausts occurred in a Greens-influenced political environment.

Then there is Canberra, the other quaint Australian political environment where Green environmental dogma is rigidly enforced.

In the summer of 2001-2002 I was back working in Canberra, where I had studied and then married a local lass of staunch Tasmanian extraction.

My wife’s parents were happily retired in semi-rural Holder though her veteran father had been severely disabled by a stroke.

A large gum tree adorning their driveway was an untamed fire hazard.

The surrounding suburbs had all been planted with identical trees by the ACT government, creating the potential for a fire storm from these highly combustible Australian native plants.

My mother-in-law assured me the ACT government under Greens dictate forbade them from even trimming theirs, though it was nature’s equivalent of a Hills hoist festooned with hand grenades, particularly in a Canberra summer.

No matter how hard they tried to remove the combustible litter which fell around its base, they were forbidden from trimming its voluminous branches which threatened in the way eucalypts do to drop a large branch on their carport.

While holidaying in Japan in December 2001 we watched appalled by images broadcast on Japan TV of what became known as the Black Christmas fires.

Holder was one of the affected suburbs but fortunately their house was spared.

Others near them were not so lucky.

Further attempts to remove or simply trim the eucalypt were rebuffed with threats of fines if they acted without approval.

A year later in January 2003 disaster struck again as fires which originated in NSW swept into the ACT.

Holder, neighbouring Duffy and Chapman were hard hit and residents were told to evacuate.

My father-in-law’s disabilities made this almost impossible and my mother-in-law decided to tough it out, though it was already too late to escape safely.

Then Chief of Army and now Professor Peter Leahy who lived close by organised food but my mother-in-law still refused to leave.

At the height of the fire storm, as the sound of exploding ammunition at the nearby Duffy Federal Police training facility could be clearly heard, she was on her roof attempting with a diminished water pressure to extinguish embers from the burning gum trees in her neighbourhood.

Their house survived though many others didn’t in the random way the fires destroyed south-western Canberra and the pine forest on Mount Stromlo.

To add insult to injury, as weary volunteers battled against overwhelming odds to save property, the ACT Greens sought a court injunction to prevent ACT fire services pre-emptively cutting down threatening eucalypts and pine trees.

Because of Green intransigence over sensible vegetation management four people died, 490 were injured and over 500 homes destroyed or irreparably damaged.

Christine Milne apparently still believes such floral protection is necessary and that her party’s idiotic policies played no part in the disaster which came close to destroying Canberra.

It’s hard to choose which might be the more appropriate deterrent, the stake and kindling with matches, or the horses and a little post-mortem mutilation.

 

 

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