Terrance is banned for two months, till June 25. In a day or two, his name will not appear, nor any of his responses under pseudonyms.
Jim has two months to prove he can write and punctuate a clear sentence. If he cannot, he will be banned for life. He is costing me too much readership.
The Cat is banned for life plus eighty-two years. He/she will be hunted down and exterminated if he/she attempts disguised re-entrance in any cavity.
G. K. Cole will be tolerated for two months, but only if he/she so signs herself. Then we shall see.
Simon is warned. Loula is getting on my nerves.
I will be seventy on May 10, and I need less aggravation.
Those contributions I like, such as those of late of Cangoru and My Girl Pearl, I will sometimes put up unamended in the main body of the text.
Work harder. Please.
Your obedient servant,
Ellis
Name:
Does this mean that I’m in the clear, Bob?
Yes.
Well Bob, we have smoked some of them out of their holes.
(Do you like my idea of requiring a log in protocol, with one nom de plume per person? Assign us each a password and watch the trolls vanish.)
Excellent. Please keep updating your readers on Damian Spruce by the way. I’ve earnestly become convinced he is the party’s best political and spiritual hope in New South Wales and more generally since your first post about him. The originality and boldness of his beliefs in regards to the arts and social justice really do encapsulate Whitlamism in a way I have not seen for a long time in the Labor Party. May he go on to claim the Mayoralty in due course.
In other news, you may be interested to know Bob that the party machine-men have already set a timetable for when the next leadership challenge against Gillard will occur. The movers are from within the Victorian Left (as they were before), but it is known to figures within the Shorten-Conroy Victorian Right.
I kid you not. God help us now.
Thanks Rupert Murdoch, banning is a tool of the despot.
Terrance,I was hoping you would stay, we need variety of opinions to keep the blog going.
All I ask from anyone is to go easy on ad hominems, but of course it’s not for me to ask…( I might get banned for interfering)
No, no, he is gone for two months, till June 25, see above.
His persecution of Mel was the sticking point.
You do not do that to anyone.
I’m with Helvi here Terrance.
To Bob, don’t let your misplaced sense of mens sibi conscia recti extinguish the life, spirit, the racy, the imaginative and the fanciful, the ornament, the zeal and the wit and the esprit, from your blog.
Spread open the banquet!
Pour the wine!
Turn on the music,
and welcome them in.
With warmth and respect.
After all, what are you here for if not to engage?
Regauge your mood and reconsider.
Please.
To Helvi, I have no idea what you mean by the “licorice” remark.
Was it addressed to me?
Untitled, all sorts of people at dinner parties and on blogs, all sorts of flavours in a bag of licorice…
I’m with you Helvi.
Me too.
That’s interesting, Bob – I’m officially warned for deigning to express my view, but whoever called me Anders Breivik is A-OK.
That’s how Leftists roll when it comes to freedom of speech.
Your sycophants who called Loula a cunt need to learn some manners.
You condone this behaviour, which makes you worse.
Intelligent people argue the point. People who call someone a cunt (especially a woman) have failed to argue their own.
If it’s A-OK to spread damaging, anti-refugee propoganda, then it’s A-OK to call you Anders Breivik. There is a parallel.
Intent before form.
I don’t read everything, and I don’t deny anybody the right to publish their idiocies in other places. I would not publish Breivik or Sarah Palin or the Papist idiots Henderson and Santorum, but I would not pass laws to stop newspapers publishing them or libraries, including school libraries, stocking their books.
You are pretty horrible, and clearly paid by a Liberal, but here you are.
Calling me a fascist for publishing you and criticising you.
Publication and criticism, surely, are both evidence of democracy, not fascism.
Or oerhaos you disagree.
Orwell -
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make.
Clearly paid by a Liberal – hilarious considering the ALP payrolls you have been on yourself over too many years.
Enjoy your millions, you’ve earned them.
I am paid by the ALP and this is known.
Tell us about yourself.
To Simon,
“Your sycophants who called Loula a cunt need to learn some manners.
You condone this behaviour, which makes you worse.”
Yes, you are correct. I would take my own out and put that “armour piercing” round through their rude and cowardly minds.
You can only imagine, with so many Rightists out there more deserving, how difficult it is for me to confide such a thing.
To Simon: thank you.
To Untitled: untitled by name, but not by nature. Thank you.
Superb Bob Ellis!
It is very difficult for us to solve the problems of the world if morons of the rightist persuasion and those determined simply to aggravate us are allowed free reign.
I know that in the past I have tried to restrain your more flamboyant attempts at reform – in the name of Realpolitik – but I think the time has come for a new manifesto.
The Labor Party now supports the free market and so-called free enterprise; but if the market and enterprise are tending in the wrong direction, it is up to a Labor government to pull it into line.
A MANIFESTO
1. Nationalise any industry which has so far offshored its labour force as to endanger Australian jobs.
2. If nationalisation is not an option, establish Government owned and run organisations – or qangos perhaps – to build vehicles, act as banks, insurance companies and the like.
3. Regulate out of business any company or organisation which does not behave properly in terms of management, employment and production.
4. Impose a tax regime which says “if you want to do business here, mine here or exploit our lands resources and skills here” you will pay tax – and lots of it, or go elsewhere.
5. Ensure that strategic industries remain here and remain well resourced.
6. Ensure that those who are unemployed are given proper support to get back into the workforce.
7. Ensure that those who are unable to work for good reason are properly supported.
8. Ensure that all individuals pay sufficient tax to cover all outgoings.
9. End all subsidies of whatever kind to all non-government schools, and take over the buildings and employ all non-government teachers as and when they become insolvent. Those which are solvent may continue, sans subsidies.
10. Regulate all media who persist in publishing blatant absurdities as truth, and cancel the absurd doctrine of “Balance” which operates to allow idiotic concepts and their proponents equal time with objective facts and accepted authorities in every field one can name.
That is enough to go on with, for the present.
You are too modest. I look forward to the glorious leadership of a future Labour Party under your sagacious guidance, and will gladly welcome – as we all should – the warm embrace of any number of bullets you deem necessary to unload into our unworthy skulls.
Failing that, I will be glad to hear of your eventual imprisonment in a cut price, privately managed mental facility, featuring a nightly menu of over-cooked steak in a thin and under-seasoned green pepper sauce, and daily bouts of sodomy delivered by an overweight Indian duty nurse with halitosis and genital warts
See below. Intelligence clearly isn’t something you suffer from.
One can only discern from your exquisitely gormless manifesto that syphilis has played havoc with your own intelligence.
One day it see’s the light and dreams of love under coffee in Auastralian eyes. Then it is rolling in pain at the whim of the pen master at his smiling lesuire and training.
There was an FC holden at Murwillumbah ,Many years ago, polished with kero under the name of Harris.It’s history included smashing the verandah’s off houses, hosting the first Gold coast biker,smashing the guard of police cars and hosting the picnics of broken families at rainforest creeks.Yellow below and black above,it passed from ex serviceman to son.I’ve repaired it many times and tired of tying surfboards to it’s racks and cleaning up after dingo’s locked inside after pub sessions.Another world and not related. Of Palimono’s, Champion’s belated. You may remember.Wallaby Bob’s pub.
I know the world of other days, and what’s befallen since,of media’s painted surface, what’s below that’s turned to mince.
But Terrance of grow, and believe too,
Relieve, for i can topple the penmaster,
with just a misplaced apostrophe or two,
the man of ink’s disaster.
There won’t be his likes again for they’re as rare as Paradise parrot, and his vision’s of what’s or could be, doesn’t appear on the Tarrot.
It’s forged by belief knowing one can change the course,
and that life revolves around, backing the wrong horse.
My time too ,it draws near,of polished bayonet,
Rosella and creek that reflects clear, life’s given sinuet.
Hold the pen and colours of looking at yourself,
Never let yourself be put,
on someone else’s shelf.
For you will know like buggery, that you’ve hurt yourself,
That your life and all around’s not yours,
Just belong’s to someone else.
The bastards here till till eighty two
Fuck me dead says opposition, President , and the governor too,
He’s Fathered many children, and they are me and you.
So Bob down and kiss my arse,
and all the politicians too,
For i’ve shaped to be Australian,
Just like fucking you.
Time for a bum joke grasshopper brother.
To jim, wonderful stuff. It seems as though you’ve unfurled your memory before us – tattered, some pages missing, others incandescent with sufferance and joy.
A benevolent man should stay on.
Don’t you think?
Thanks, that was compilation of memories spread over an early decades of watching the gold coast and below turn from paradise to brick and bitumen.
The rest,an Anzac day pen loaded with scotch and brandy.
I’ll have to take Doug’s advice and write any pieces in notepad first before posting. These little boxes play hell with me. My damaged keyboard isn’t helping matters either with capitals and jumping sentences into others.
Hey Jim! Why don’t you shout yourself a new keyboard? They’re only a few dollars, and you’ll enjoy the difference in the results… and maybe the other punters too
And thanks for the comment on spin, you’re too generous!
My keyboard is attached to a near new laptop. I’ll pull it apart when I think up some more computer swear words.The last lot didn’t work though I gave them my best vocals.
To jim, you’re welcome. It’s not so much the form as the content that is of interest to me jim.
Note pad or not, keep up the writing.
An interesting poem, jim. Perhaps that is your hidden forte? Go for it! – I for one can forgive the occasional lost space between a full stop and the next sentence!
You can. I cannot.
Bob, as a housekeeping matter, would you please get rid of the emoticons?
What, pray, are they?
You are too modest. I look forward to the glorious leadership of a future Labour Party under your sagacious guidance, and will gladly welcome – as we all should – the warm embrace of any number of bullets you deem necessary to unload into our unworthy skulls.
Failing that, I will be glad to hear of your eventual imprisonment in a cut price, privately managed mental facility, featuring a nightly menu of over-cooked steak in a thin and under-seasoned green pepper sauce, and daily bouts of sodomy delivered by an overweight Indian duty nurse with halitosis and genital warts.
Sorry – intended for the pretentious, tedious. cretinous Doug Quixote. Not you, Mr Ellis.
To spleenblatt, I would question you further on your politics, which from what I can deduce, are deplorable.
However, on your assessment of character I can find no fault!
Yes, quite a few bullets may be needed, armour piercing rounds required. But the massacre is a thing beloved of the rightists. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of massacres have been perpetrated by rightists; if you want to mention Stalin, he was about as right as it was possible to get in the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 1930s. Pol Pot appears to be an exception, but many killed were a form of ethnic cleansing and not ideological.
The mad gunman, assassin or mad bomber is usually a creature inspired by rightist ideas and rightist figures.
You’re more right than you know.
Thank you, champions!
And your writing represents what… impartiality, play the ideas and not the man? It’s his blog, Terrance, not yours or anyone elses. What is your track record, pray tell, as a published author, scriptwriter, journalist, or speechwriter, exactly? Do share with us your contribution to the world of letters apart from these fleabite scribblings.
Ah, I see. A pornographer. Says it all, really. Thanks for the clarification.
Not exactly in the same league as say, D.H Lawrence with his Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Philip Roth with his Portnoy’s Complaint though. Room for improvement, as teacher might say.
I guess you can say one day that you started at the bottom and worked your way up, anal allusions notwithstanding.
Bob Ellis, will you let me speak?
Or is your offer simply the appearance of…..equity?
Speak on.
Mind your mouth.
Dear Bob and bloggers,
I came to this site becase I was interested in being part of a discussion on a range of topics. I started with this one not because I had read alot of Bob’s writings before (though of course I knew who Bob was) but because someone I know is a great admirer of Bob’s and had shared some musings from Table Talk on his Facebook page. I don’t always have an opinion or something to share on the topic at hand. And at times I have objected to the way Bob has portrayed an issue or language he’s used. But I’ve enjoyed the Table Talk and the Classic Ellis.
But the discussion is another thing. I’m all up for a robust discussion and disagreement and debate and I’ve seen alot of that here, but surely people are grown up enough to do that without resorting to personal attacks. And we have a dig at the way politiians carry on? Give me a break. I want to hear what people think about the topics. There’s a range of opinions and styles on this blog that I think is great. I get that there are obviously some long-standing personal debates going on here, but frrankly I don’t care. Get over yourselves.
Also, if you don’t like the way Bob runs the blog, or you don’t like his style or his views – then don’t read it and don’t participate. This isn’t a newspaper where we should be able to expect transparency and independence. It’s a blog. Bob invites discussion, he owns the page – he can do with it what he will. From what I can see, as long as you have a reasoned argument to present he’ll let it stand, but some of you people need to learn to let stuff go. Jeepers. You make a point, people concur or not – at some point you kind of have to agree to disagree.
The truth is, I think some of you like to feel indignant. It makes you feel like your view of the world has been confirmed and ratified. Shock, horror and disbelief – Bob Ellis has Labor leanings! Oh, my, goodness – news of the day. He’d like to see a successful Labor government. But he’s also open to having a discussion about the problems of Labor.
So read, participate but please stop the whingeing and the personal attacks. I don’t want to have to stop reading this blog because I can’t find my way through all the crap to the good conversation.
Love, My Girl Pearl
Oh whoohooo
Lotta words MGP. Hope you haven’t been called a “c..t” on here.
Yep, this place is No Country for Youngish Catholic Non-Labor-voting Non-Totalitarian-Supporting Women.
Enjoy!
I don’t want anyone to be spoken to like that. That was the point.
Toughen up, princess.
They’re a bunch of prima donnas. Sometimes we get bored and give out a serve. The blog is infested with lots of trolls and if a few get burnt good fucking riddance.
Well said Pearl.
Myself, I can’t bog down in the daily public cheer squad barracking of Canberra Disneyland. It’s like being on call pouring wine for the fiddler while Rome burned. Neutering yourself and swallowed in the crushing masses.
We have 70% ownership of media and a plethora of right wing machines.
The ABC stacked brimful with liberal, the legal system, the medical, the public service, real estate, town planning local governments. The manipulators, players, the lackey’s the crawlers. Even though in the myriad of views and humanities, they all make a machine.
The right to me is all espoused but basically by power, an oligarchy of corporate and institution owning state and working hell bent for leather working on that and winning. The Left, the worker and everything battered and opposite the right.The human must be brought out of the lot.
To me,labour is compiled of about 25 % of actual old Labour values and sight which includes a good life balance in Governance and of class matters of overindulgence.The rest blowing along in the whirlwind. Some enjoying,some battered ,some riding for self gain.
The opposite is the height of Liberal who damn near own the air all breathe and kill for it.
Today, the mess is blurred by tierage of money and class and no particular line in the sand to work from for a stand and the balance of what should be and stable and humane tipping far to the heights and right.
It is a foray into old US grounds with all the same pitfalls and tricks, blood and hypocrisy’s and little wonder that here, many want to play the game or are indulging inadvertantly largely by blindness.
To me, it is applying the management systems of an alien with differing problems, populations and psyches and clime to ours and the monster of it justify’s itself with the pandemonium of it’s last planned steps and forrays into overindulgence that it blames on the weather to progress all into it’s mess.
Being an anomaly I see a lot from underfoot. As I’ve said in other posts the art of demanding all pick up from the present point, the battered side of the stolen takings and forcing an onward march into more of it, is becoming perpetual and system embedded in the art.
It is costing this country dearly, in psyche and soul and souls alone and let alone into matters of tourism ,international love towards us and matters of the arts and culture and youthful ethics. It is costing millions of good individuals, their lives,peace in community. And doesn’t have to be. The biggest part of it’s name is greed.
There are matters that can be tended that hurt no one on the scale but relieve all and those steps and foundations are not being attended in matters of public health, housing and bill stress.
From Wikipedia -
“Sabotage, done well, is inherently difficult to detect and difficult to trace to its origin. During WWII, the FBI investigated 19,649 cases of sabotage and concluded the enemy had not caused any of them.
There are many examples of physical sabotage in wartime. However, one of the most effective uses of sabotage is against organisations. The OSS manual provides numerous techniques under the title “General Interference with Organizations and Production”:
When possible, refer all matters to committees for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible- never less than five
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible, Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions
In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines
Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye
To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work
Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done
Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
From the section entitled, “General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion” comes the following quintessential simple sabotage advice: Act stupid.”
Be careful Reader1, you too may be accused of quoting things!
I found that interesting by the way, and curiously applicable. Thank you.