I am on the train from Adelaide to Melbourne experiencing diarrhoea, drinking only non-alcoholic liquids, abjuring all solid food, emailing old friends, reading my wife’s new novel and occasionally dozing.
And it has occurred to me how to solve the Slipper Sex Harassment Paralysis Of Parliament and get the nation, once again, admiring the Swan Budget, the Carr Grand Tour and the Roxon War On The Killer Tobacco, and so on. It is this.
Make Slipper, like Hacker, a Minister Without Portfolio empowered to fill in on public occasions for Ministers absent or indisposed, give him in that capacity a Minister’s wage and announce that Harry Jenkins will be filling in for him as Speaker Pro Tem till Christmas Day.
This will tactically palliate Abbott, who mourned Harry’s passing, and give him no cause to move motions of no confidence in the Speaker, or anybody. And make him very, very angry.
And the interest rates will come down and the Budget pass and the Gillard Government be on the front foot again.
If something of this order does not happen, the business of government can be held up hereafter by frivolous court action whenever an Opposition chooses, by whatever trivial fabrication, to mention a sexual matter.
It will become known as The Slipper Sideward Shuffle and pass amusingly into legend.
Please consider.
Name:
The Giilard Government be on the front foot? They are desperately incompetent – without a plan or a grownup at the helm.
They stagger from foulup to cockup and waste billions between… you might have noticed that Rudd was so woeful he was dumped in his first term – what if anything has improved since that day?
The good news is that the ALP have effectively self-destructed themselves and (thankfully) the Greens. All we have left is rubble and debris.
That anyone in the ALP would ever give you more than the time of day is laughable.. or may go to partially explain the shambles that remain.
PS I hope you get better ASAP
Bullshit.
This is a good government governing well. By any objective analysis they should be 10 points clear in the polls.
Why not? Ask Rupert and his sycophants.
Agree completely re achievements of this government, starting with bravely saving lots of Australians from unemployment and ending by even more bravely taking a world role to save the lives of our children and grandchildren from the looming climate catastrophe.
I’m not sure if their low appreciation levels are attributable to Murdoch, or more to fact that this is increasingly a nation of carnivorous sheep, but.
The battering of Labour here in Queensland for a couple of years in the press was artfully done.The majority could have been left with nothing else but the view that they are sick of hearing about this.
Always some built up shock story of warning of nothing, but headlines and lead ins serving their purpose to the browsers.
I feel that with 55% of housing in this country owned by 22% of the population and from viewing the rise and politics to the boom, that we are run by a communized 30% of powers above.
A rent of 140 a week kills me slow. Soon the bottle and hopelessness on a pension and bills and matters flow in and compile at the worst possible times. Often taking months to past a year to get out of that others sort in a half hour.
Presently organizing a relative with a broken car and cleaning up so they may go into better housing in older age then it is back on the road living on cold tinned food, coffee and cigarettes till finding somewhere to pass a few weeks in comfort with a feed of fish and time for salads.
Nature, a camera and paint brushes pass the time dodging humans and years of work has gone in the bins for more room to travel. Always something around the corner. Millionaires ,retired and holidaying, whining of their troubles, the older trying to fathom a working life of every day the same and that yesterday they were 17. Sitting for two hours outback waiting for ambulance with a woman with a broken arm and her dead husbands head on her lap. Always the birds and animals, my family. I had my chance with a heart attack on the Nullabor alone and have thrown the pills away on walking out of hospital but he has deserted me. I would be an anomaly with my posting and blogging to empty air and those in comfort and concerns of the 30%.
Soon the rainforest will fill my hours again.
Always talk of the whole,of Australians and Australia as the country goes in a different direction and it’s wealth, comforts, security and chances upward.
Oh, shut up.
To Simon:
Which of the Gillard Government’s one hundred and sixty new laws do you oppose?
Eight will do.
Simon?
Go ahead and console yourself with one hundred and sixty new laws – the ALP are under 30% primary vote, and in the last year have been smashed in NSW and are currently riding around in a Tarago with a spare front seat in QLD. And if you think Gillard has a greater chance than Bligh or Keneally did – good luck!
The next election will be joyous – and the gravy train for all the fellow travelers will be derailed for a long time to come.
Umberto Eco –
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view – one follows the decisions of the majority. For [Universal] Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
Thank you Reader1, I think that sums it up quite well. The fascists are determined to overthrow this government, by fair means or foul.
There are probably still enough moderates in the ranks of the conservatives to be properly appalled by the anti-democratic tendencies of those who claim that the government lacks legitimacy. At least, I hope so.
We do have to acknowledge though DQ that Labor really are making it easy to have themselves overthrown. They have set themselves up for the fall here and as a Labor member the way they have handled matters like the speakers chair really makes me angry. Slipper as the Speaker was always a dumb ass idea. There was always a risk of it going pear-shaped.
Labor’s policy agenda is just going by the wayside because they have compromised themselves on how they’ve hadnled things like this because they’ll do anything to hold onto power.
I think Labor as an organisation (not a government) has to start thinking about it’s long-term future. It is so focussed on short-term political wins that as an organisation it has lost alot of credibility. They need to be prepared to lose, go back to basics and sort out the organisation so that they can successfully promote and implement policy in the future. Otherwise the future is grim. Organisations can and do die if they don’t change.
You are probably right, My Girl Pearl.
The time for soul searching is when you are in opposition. By the way, have the current opposition actually got a soul?
And that is my gripe, that a perfectly satisfactory government is to be torn down to impose that rag-tag collection of misfits on Australia.
“They say” that we get the government we deserve, but I always hope for a better result than that!
We get the Government we vote for. No more. No less. The voter always gets it right (until of course they don’t vote the way we think they should). I agree that this is a satisfactory Government, but that doesn’t mean alot when people are disillusioned with you and don’t trust you and can’t see that the alternative is going to be all that bad for them. We can’t expect people to vote us back in just because we’ve been a satisfactory Government and we think we deserve another term. I’m a bit frustrated at the constant pointing of fingers at everyone else when Labor faces woes. As an organisation, and Parliamentary party, we aren’t very good at taking responsibility. We can’t just keep blaiming everything on Rupert. If Labor did some real soul searching in Opposition, and as an organisation at any time – Labor is not just it’s Parliamentary parties – then perhaps they wouldn’t find themselves in this mess.
So you think they have done good work, then? And they still should be extinguished?
How do you reason that?
No, hang on Simon let’s take a step back here. I’m happy to be part of a debate on the pros and cons of any government, and there have been things about the Rudd-Gullard govenment I havent agreed with. I haven’t been able to see their bigger picture at times and that has bothered me. But in all honesty, I don’t think Howard had one either – or perhaps it was that I just didn’t like his. And I was really sick of the wedge politics that Howard had turned into a fine art. Howard encouraged a political culture of Australians to be satisfied with their own prosperity and not be interested in what our broader community might need. The education debate is a great example – ‘my kids go to a great school, and I don’t rightly care that other kids go to crap schools, but I’ll damn well whinge when they feature as statistics in the long term unemployed – lazy bluggers.” Bugger the rest of you I’m all right thanks Jack. And whether you like the Carbon Tax and other major policies or not they are grappling with big issues in a way that Howard and now Abbott refused to in their mantra if keeping the nation comfortable so no one would ask questions.
. You and others allege that the Gillard government is incompetent, but when asked to describe their incompetence do not and simply resort to broad sweeping statements of generality.
You want to debate it, then debate it properly and argue with evidence.
So, they have a few policies which you don’t like. On that basis I could say that the Coalition were ‘incompetent’, but that would be ridiculous. labor have had a few cock ups, but I bet people could come up with a couple in the first few terms of Howard too. And Rudd was ditched cause he is a narcissistic little control freak with a chip the size of Gibraltar on his shoulder from being the very smart chappy who no one actually likes (I totally rejected Bob’s attempt at describing Rudd as being ‘on the spectrum’ as we say in my world).. You can’t run a cabinet like that. and as I always said: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very annoying man.”
Our nation is ticking along ok. Much successful legislation has been passed. That is the business of government.
Being unpopular is not the same as being incompetent. 161 pieces of legislation? I’ll accept that.
So, as Bob challenged you Simon – name eight or shut up because your shrillness is hurting my ears.
The Gullard girl?
It’s aark aark – crow call
Step back a little
I don’t mind Julia. I certainly prefer her to Abbott. I’m a Labor supporter, but it doesn’t mean I’m not a critic. I think they have good policy agenda but I think they’ve compromised that agenda in the way they’ve handled other things – like appointing Slipper. Accident waiting to happen either by his own action, or the actions of the Libs.
To Simon:
So you think Campbell Newman saving each taxpaying Queenslander one cent a month in perpetuity by abolishing the Premier’s Literary Awards was good policy, do you?
Say why.
Say why.
Please say why.
Please?
Luvvies sucking up funds for shit books. Keep going Newman. No luvvies blew p when he canned the sports boxes. You piss poor fraud. That Shorten certainly knows the Alp lines. Pathetic.. ” I’m sure she’s right”. Sorry but the left are brain dead.
What shit books are those? Please answer this.
Name four brain dead left persons.
Come on.
Just do it.
Tiny Dancer?
Your suggestion is just tinkering around the edges. Gillard’s government have already lost the public, and the media. It recalls the dying days of NSW Labor and Abbott will be PM by Christmas next year.
Unless they become a truly reforming government, stop this insipid pandering to the Murdoch press and get on with it. Piss off the stupid surplus, the idiotic objection to gay marriage, the meek mining tax and hammer home the carbon tax. And do it in spite of the shock jocks and for once own the debate.
They need to come out fighting and create the vision they believe in. Anything in between will be failure and they’ll lose the election anyway.
No, the polls show they have gained half a million votes since August. At this rate they will win with a forty seat majority a year from October.
Don’t tell lies.
Don’t tell big lies.
Firstly Bob, would you categorise tonight as ‘A wet night on a slow moving train’?
Surely Slipper is best kept outside the tent (preferably down the road in a portaloo) pissing in than inside the cabinet painting the walls with his tarred political toilet brush.
Surely someone in PMO is dreaming of getting Wilkie into the Chair.
Harry Jenkins will do.
He was the good Puck of the House, and should never have been let go.
this is off topic, but Harold Evans has just summed up the emperor of bullshit
“I am not able to compete with Murdoch in fabrication – he has had a lifetime of experience”
A couple of other nice pieces on Guardian.co.uk after the crumbling idol’s first Leveson performance, which was a fair display of his talents at what he does best
To Bob Ellis : Is it possible to demand individual recognition before being able to place a post? I for one am quite happy to let you know sufficient details to ensure that I am me and no other; perhaps you could send a back-email assigning an individual password.
Of course, we would be trusting you to keep our identities confidential, but those who like to aggravate and abuse you and your regular contributors, anonymously, would vanish instantly. (To others who may be reading: I am polite if addressed politely.)
Please consider this.
Loula referred to “minions” in general; there were no specific “minions” named or alluded to.
You replied by calling her a C…!
Explain to me how this reconciles with your blatant lie, “I am polite if addressed politely”.
It referred directly to my post. I requested her on three separate occasions over a period of days to retract the word. She refused, and even compounded the insult.
I have never – never – lied on this blog.
I have never set out to deceive or to intentionally mislead.
Can you say the same?
Let’s be clear Doug, Loula offered no names and the allusions were, to any not privy to your sycophancy and skullduggery, oblique. To those of us who are privy to your character it was simply an accurate observation. You then chose, in your namby pamby preciousness, to use it as a rod to beat all and sundry.
The rod changed hands after your shameful meltdown and now you cry foul!
Loula was not under any obligation to retract even a syllable let alone deny her true feelings and, might i add, her most accurate assessment of your personality, on the strength of your precious slight?
You have said far worse often enough and have retracted nothing!
What preposterous hypocrisy!
You practice deceit regularly.
you practice ignorance daily.
You are doing it now.
Do you realise that you have not offered an apology or even an acknowledgement of your disgusting behaviour?
Just sweep it under the carpet, nothing to see here, move on, move on.
And that DQ, speaks volumes about your character.
I will do as I please and I won’t be held to account by some anonymous blogger.
As they say in the classics, Fuck off.
“I won’t be held to account by some anonymous blogger.”
I do believe that would be Loula’s position as well.
Even in “explanation” you commit the crime of hypocrisy.
As they say in the classics – DQ: Resident of Bolgia 6.
I hear it all the time.
Anyway, how’s your blog going?
Got many to give up their names/addresses/phone numbers/bank account details/ABN’s/childrens birthdays/wedding anniversaries??
To Bob Ellis, I took you at your word. and you dishonoured it.
Appalling.
To Doug The Recreant Quixote,
On behalf of Loula: “I won’t be held to account by some anonymous blogger.”
I do believe that would be Loula’s position as well.
Even in “explanation” you commit the crime of hypocrisy.
From me: After your previous primal transgression I had vowed never to communicate with a malevolent witticaster such as yourself again……but I return to write, once again humbled…. in awe, of your continued, inevitable, and spectacular public collapse into that rancid cesspit that constitutes your intellectual and moral landscape.
You have astonished me beyond all reckoning!
How is it that you can come back, after your day of vicious vileness; your day of petulant poison and puerile grandstanding, and resume as if it were all……..but a dream?
How is it that shame has not rendered mute your voice?
How is it that shame has not forced you to seek refuge in a dignified absence?
How is it that shame has not, for but a moment, cauterised your heart
How is it that shame could not drag forth from your throttled throat an apology…..an acknowledgement….an act of penitence, an etymon of contrition…even perhaps some evidence of a Conscience?
It is difficult to imagine the nature of that internal succubi that resides within you Quixote, and guides you to such explicit, public, absurdity…..whereby your mechanism of Honour appears broken or missing altogether and its absence hardly concerning you.
It is, without doubt, simply….a wonder!
It is my contention that a man who glances into that cold mirror and bears witness to that sad dawning of his own moral cowardice is rendered immune to personal insight or humility: Hubris fills that inevitable void; where posts are repeated verbatim across a series of blogs, as if their wit or acumen demand continued and necessary publication, where the obvious is proclaimed as epiphany, where mannerism substitutes for originality, where pomposity trumps sensitivity, where absurdity masks the sensitive…ultimately where one can declare to strangers a “demand”, a “warning”, and offer them “last chances”!
Your Lunacy here yesterday shamed you beyond repair.
This time you dragged into your unctuous orbit those who were without guilt and proceeded to inflict upon them and others your coarse imbecility, your diseased spittle, and your juvenile self righteousness.
All here bore witness…..and all shall remember.
You can publish as many Wiki cut and paste’s as you like,
You can assume your role as Ellis’ Courtier; his knave, parasite and proneur, whenever you wish,
You can compliment the posts of others with your Dull flattery till Doomsday…
What you cannot do however is remove the appalling memory of yesterday’s horror that you have, in your own inimitable way, compounded with this daring act of “forgetfulness”.
What did you think Doug LickSpittle? That if you crept in quietly…on another forum….praising Ellis without purpose to his article, that we would all just forget??!!
The matrix is set…..and from it you shall not escape.
And I stand here with this promise to you: I am determined to demonstrate MY moral courage and strength by engaging you whenever there is the suggestion, the barest of hints, that you seek to cleave the human principals that I hold dear.
And so it goes.
C—!
So, let’s leave it there, shall we?
Who are you?
I don’t think I like you.
Go away.
It is ‘JG Cole’ of course – read the nearly identical post above it.
It is also ‘Stagger Lee’ and any number of other “United States of Tara” identities.
Wipe it out now – it will save time.
Good God!
What gave me away?
Was it the “nearly identical post above it” ???
Your imbecility knows no bounds!
And i have nothing but contempt for your Dull mind.
Bob, “Who am I”?
I see you often when you come to town.
Sometimes we have lunch. I have a double dimple with 1 ice
You’ve asked 2 favours of me in the last 18 months.
Anyway, those days are almost over.
Just a few goodbyes left…..
I think I know from your writing.I will bid this place adieu and wish you well too.
To Untitled, 1966:
What are you, a stalker? Why glory in your refusal to let me know who you are? How creepy is that?
Only in your world of the Grand Gesture would one equate having lunch and drinks with “stalking”!
How utterly comical!
Anonymity Bob, no glory sought, simply anonymity.
Take it at face value and leave your dramatic expressions for those who are Dull enough to be doe eyed by them.
There are plenty here.
Stand warned yourself – they diminish your cache with every mindless cut and paste contribution.
Dear Untitled, please don’t waste any more energy on that man (or indeed Bob Ellis) on my behalf.
It’s true I referred to him and Reader1 as “minions”. To me, that’s how they behave on here – and that’s putting it politely. This was in response to their calling other posters psychopaths and mass murderers simply because they hold different political opinions.
In my (sheltered?) experience, “minion” is not on par with “c..t”. But Bob Ellis and his…um, indulged, faithful followers… disagree.
It’s Bob’s bog to cultivate as he wishes.
In my humble opinion, you are too good for it.
From Wikipedia -
In economics, other social sciences and philosophy, analysis based on opinion is referred to as normative analysis (what ought to be), as opposed to positive analysis, which is based on scientific observation (what materially is or is experimentally demonstrable).
Historically, the distinction of demonstrated knowledge and opinion was articulated by Ancient Greek philosophers. Today, Plato’s analogy of the divided line is a well-known illustration of the distinction between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and belief, in customary terminology of contemporary philosophy. Opinions can be persuasive, but only the assertions they are based on can be said to be true or false.
To Untitled 1966:
In lieu of an AVO, you are banned for life.
No, it’s not a joke.
It will be as if you had never been born.
To Bob “Beria” Ellis,
And you wonder why your reputation suffers.
Goodbye Bob.
I agree with Bob on many issues; we share a worldview which is obviously not one shared by right wing people.
I have had many serious disagreements with Ellis – I am sure he has chapter and verse – but we have mutually and separately decided not to push each other’s buttons.
Some people (one person or perhaps two in particular) seem to take particular pleasure in attacking, aggravating and flaming those of us who wish to explore our views in depth, if we were not distracted and sidetracked by those others.
I call on them to cease and desist and go where they are appreciated.
And go now.
I think you will find to your great inconvenience, the Quixote Manifesto shared by many an erstwhile left-wing despot in the nascent stages of their dictatorship. It would be of some concern that a man in the employ of the ALP shares your worldview, should the assertion not have emanated from such a fawning popinjay, and should the remit of any such employment actually amount to anything other than a symbolic gesture.
The case stands proved.
Peter now carries stigmata and publicly applied. I think his days might be done. Positions may be too uncomfortable for him and the public and both sides of parliament. Are we all, including him , to suffer an attempt? Matters of it all coming to a head may provide the light to follow but stigmata is what is. If matters were upheld, what example is it for him to fight to exist in that pampered overstuffed upper world?
Peter will have to do all his fighting from the Joe Citizen trenches but I bet he has no will without the pampering and perks.
Shut up. Shut up.
Go away.
Learn English.
Billions have.
Find another excuse. He so concerned with Leveson and dismissals. What am I, a ghost?
No one will last too long here that hasn’t patience to get through some of yours either.
Slipper will fire no shots from the citizen trenches for the people without being paid like 98% of all the rest.
He is a marked man.
Fuck off, Jim.
Learn to write.
As this says Phonecalls, I’m wanting to call JohnS.
I tiptoed in and was I stunned!!
There to greet me, up on the right, was Grandma’s favourite poet-singer, young Don Mclean in his strummin’ days; looking slightly sheepish.
I heard of the cancellation of all performances of “Rancid Disgrace”. SoloMan was pelted on the stage, with old fruit , by the mighty men at the RSL hall. Uproar. And someone was seen handing out lollies in the loo – bags of liqorice allsorts were confiscated. Oh What a Night!
But I’m really hoping to contact Johnsalmond.
John?? Your review of Mel’s film “The Passion” – moronic yet funny – mentioned the nose-worm as an amusing highlight, for you. Well, I’ve seen something disturbing. On all the pictures of de Vere, there is movement! That’s right. It could be worms. It’s too awful for me to approach, so would you mind investigating same?
No need to get back to me, John. I’m certain I’ll hear your uproarious laughter, all the way up the coast, and across the border.
A B
Very interesting,rings a bell to others writing:)
Cooee
(A B in his Bonnet. He knows not the hour nor the day)
You would have a worm or two as well if you were 562 years old.
An interesting post, AM (AB?). Liquorice allsorts are rather overrated; Bob’s diarrhoea may be a result, but what of the gestalt organism? Hopefully, its guts will run completely out of its body and it will vanish up its own fundament;
we live in hope.