'Nasty' Abbott and Howard Florey : told they'd be important from day they were born

the new Howard Florey ?

Reading David Marr's fascinating walkabout through the early years of the next Aussie PM, A. 'Nasty' Abbott, an astute student of that other hard-driving Aussie, Howard Florey, can't help but see similarities in how both men's families deliberately distorted their only son's personality to suit their parental dreams.

Both men were the only spoiled child - the only male child - in a family of girls. From birth they were told constantly they, not the girls, would be somebody--- that they had to be somebody.

Spoil a child and raise up a sociopath....

"At all costs , get there !"

Energy, sharp elbows and "take no prisoners" attitudes got them to the top but left very few, except fellow sociopaths, really liking them.

The lazy but studiously modest Alexander Fleming charmed his way into getting a Nobel Prize and most of the glory for merely discovering penicillin ("to be basically useless as a life-saver") .

Fleming left it to others to work hard (onto death in the case of Martin Henry Dawson) to prove the reverse : that penicillin is in fact the most useful life-saving medicine yet invented (my italics).

One who worked hard to prove up penicillin was Florey - but widespread dislike of Florey led the media (and Fleming and his hospital) to make Alec Fleming the star of this saga.

History isn't done with wannabe DLP leader Nasty Abbott : but I doubt it will be kind.

Both Florey and Abbott had much in their characters to admire but because they were warped from birth by their parents, the bad always seemed to outweigh the good in them, as they obeyed their parents' dictates to succeed at all costs, unceasingly issued to them since before they could even speak.

Spoil a child and ruin a nation.....