We’re a weird mob.

The things we get all worked up about and the things we let slide can make for bizarre comparisons.

Take the equine virus.

If I hear one more sob story on this matter, I reckon I might need to take some horse medicine myself.

There’s no denying the outbreak has hurt the industry, and has hit the battlers at the grass roots level which is never good, but the hysteria is galloping out of control.

Let’s consider that while the gee-gees get over the sniffles, out there in Pub TAB Land, there might be a little more money being directed from boxed trifectas back to the family coffers for once, meaning more food on the table.

And in this supposed sport of kings, it is a little hard to feel sorry for the whinnying multi-millionaires of the racing industry who have made their pile.

Personally, it has resulted in the same feeling of utter non-sadness to wash over me as when America’s Cup yacht oneAustralia folded like a sheet of cardboard and sank all those years ago.

Then there’s the matter of sports stars getting busted for drugs.

Okay kids. Drugs are bad. I think most of us over the age of five understand this concept.

As we grow up we make choices. Sometimes we make bad choices and, due to a multitude of intervening factors, some of us are more prone to making bad choices than others.

This is true whether you are a former Brownlow medallist with an abdomen chiselled from teak or a single mum chewing her finger nails and pushing a pram outside Cash Converters.

The only difference I can see is that the latter goes unnoticed while the former drives news agendas around the country and water cooler babble for weeks on end.

I read a great quote the other day which went something like this: “The thing about drugs is they cloud the mind of the accuser as much as the abuser.”

We are living in the clouds if we think Ben Cousins, Joey Johns et al are the real problem here.

Let’s start playing fair on this issue so everybody has a chance of winning.

What about whales? I like whales as much as the next person. They are gentle and intelligent. They should not be unnecessarily killed. The little ones are cute.

However, things get a little out of whack with whales when they get washed up on a beach somewhere, don’t you think?

The nation stops. Men with beards and terrible wetsuits mount all night vigils. Families weep and pour buckets of water over the stricken creature, stopping every now and again to administer inter-mammalian hugs.

Experts fly in from all over the globe to apply their best strategies for returning the animal to the deep but they needn’t bother, because we all know how the story ends.

On day three of Whale Watch, the behemoth which galvanised an entire population is finally coaxed back out to sea only to beach itself again a kilometre up the coast for the final time, whereby a national day of mourning is called.

And we can’t forget The Worm. Not the dance performed by the masses on the beer soaked floor of the Playroom when The Ballistics fired up the Chuck Berry hit Nadine on dollar nights circa 1982, but the vastly less inspirational network gimmick employed for TV’s Great Debate.

It has been held up as a symbol of free speech – a Nelson Mandela of the animated annelids – rather than the meaningless ratings ploy that it was.

The feverish dissection of what was judged to be a gripping controversy overshadowed any useful analysis of what the leaders had to say, made easier by the fact that they both kind of said the same thing anyway, none of which was anything close to inspirational.

This is what they both want to do. They want to buy us off with tax cuts. This is like your neighbour pinching avocados from your backyard and then bringing around guacamole dip. There’s a taste of deception which sticks in your craw.

Forget about the free gifts, this is what we all should be demanding of our politicians if we are to trust them with our vote.

Children first.

Show us the policies which deliver our nation’s most valuable and vulnerable from evil, then implement them and enact them until all children are safe.

Like a tartan suitcase lying submerged in a moonlit duck pond of Sydney’s south-west, the silence has been eerie.