A young friend of mine who works for a Minister tells me there is a lot of sense in a Rudd return and it will not lead to members resigning their seats and bringing down the government. He says it is the only thing to do. A third leader in six years would look too much like New South Wales and result in disaster. We have to go back to the original one. To Rudd. To Kevin ’07.
I tell him he is wrong. In the sixties there were four Prime Ministers (Menzies, Holt, McEwen, Gorton) in two years and nine months and the last one retained office, narrowly, at the next election. There were three Prime Ministers (Lyons, Page, Menzies) in a month in 1939 and the latter narrowly retained office in 1940. There were four Liberal leaders (Howard, Nelson, Turnbull, Abbott) in two years flat and the latter, Abbott, is now leading in the polls. But no. The young fool has taken on board a new theology unconnected with anything that is real and that is that.
I told him that in Queensland there were two leaders in seventeen years and the greatest electoral wipeout in the Party’s history. In 1983 in Canberra two leaders in five weeks and the greatest victory. I told him in New South Wales it wasn’t leadership change but the American accent of the leader and the privatisation of the one thing everyone didn’t want privatised were the crucial factors and Rees would have won if left alone.
But no; he’s bought the package, and Rudd is coming back.
What a stupid, stupid idea.
If he does Clive Palmer with his boundless millions will keep running ads in which Crean, Roxon and Howes bag Rudd in vision and a deep voice asks, ‘What REALLY happened at Scores? None of us know. But THIS girl knows’, and a pixillated strumpet recalls his nose in her cleavage, and the rest of it.
The man they threw out after two years as Prime Minister. Why do they trust him now?
There are candidates for Prime Minister — Albo, Clare, Carr, Crean, Combet, Plibersek, Roxon, Shorten, to put them in alphabetical order, or Beazley, Beattie, Bracks, Gallop, Hawke, Rann, Rees and Wedderburn if he were found a seat — who would do better in an election than Gillard and be less risky than Rudd. Polls should be done asking who would go well against Abbott and the results looked at. It’s not that hard to work out what to do. A little numerate imagination is needed, not much more.
Rudd is the panic button, and he looks like the panic button.
Why not just count the numbers? Out there? Among the people?
They will show, I’m sure, Labor on 48 under any other leader.
And we can win from there.
Name:
Plibersek will get male vote, Bracks sound good too, very likable, same can be said about Beattie…
Pity our leaders are expected to have personal charisma, good policies will win me over, Gillard was pretty confident on 7.30 last night…
..the male vote
…male basketweavers vote
Why would the ALP resurrect the engineer of their decades-predicted demise?
That he was such a woeful PM his own party had to dump him during his first term speaks volumes.
Too bad his replacement was unimaginably worse as it turned out.
The ALP and Laborpendents will sit tight for as long as they can, coining their salary and maximising their super until they are hurled from office at the election. Who can blame them for that?
Worse still is that Shorten could have claimed the PMship, admitted they will be punished at the election and pledge to work for the country and his party and be noble in defeat, then work even harder as Opposition leader. But this would involve principle and integrity which seems to be in very short supply at Chez Shorty.
Your worried about Clive Palmer putting out adds against Rudd. What about the unions financing Abbott sneaking out the back door of George Pells office. Connecting him to what has being going on with the protection of these priest and don’t tell me Abbott didn’t know what was going on whilst he was training to be one and the same. They want to get into the sewer then so be it. He is not a man’s bootlace and deep down he knows it. Why do you think his negativity is so pronounced.Those are the borders of his mentality. Oh and you should take more note of young advice Bob and stop patronising them with outdated history. Rudd is for now not then and they want him.
No, “They” don’t.
Nobody wants a return to Rudd, but a return to Rudd if that is the only option is a safer bet than Gillard. I woke up to hearing her voice on the news and really, she speaks auditory razor blades that leave one clutching for anything that can make it stop, oh please god make it stop.
As Oakey Doaky said, changing the leader without changing the policies is useless. People know they don’t vote for a PM, they vote for a government, with polices. From what I can gather Rudd has been talked about in conjunction with dropping the carbon tax and this is suicide.
Ed Miliband should be making a whirlwind tour of Australia, drop a speech or two, much like Tony Abbott has done in America just last week. Win, win comrades.
Either way, those young voters will be just an enamored with Rudd back in the cabinet making regular appearances.
Watching Bob Ellis on QANDA circa 2009, the show was called “Beyond Spin”, how much has changed!
Have you not been asked back on Qanda Bob? You were brilliant. Its also quite a stark difference how much more audience participation there was compared with now.
William; You disappoint me.
You’ve been afflicted with the ‘they’ disease with a secondary dose of the ‘we’.
Take the pills and reconsider in the morning.
If you have nightmares it will the Ed Miliband syndrome kicking in.
Ludicrously naive, out of his pram.
Yeah, a reconciliation, Rudd back in the Cabinet, all chums again, is the way to go; or would be if the people were big enough to put their country and party first.
Ellis the history you quote is irrelevant except possibly for 1983. You know that
Have a look what is happening with the announcement of the closure of our only refinery in NSW. The recent discussions have been mostly negative about propping up our car industry. Caltex timed this exquisitly and it suits the government’s poor fiscal position. They miss the big picture or maybe they are comfortable with our future reliance on fuel imports and the American alliance to protect our shipping lanes because if they can’t we are stuffed. We are becoming increasingly vulernable to American reliance. Last time I looked Caltex is an American company(Texaco) Interesting how Abbott the lapdog of the republicans after his visit to the US parrots how the Chinese should be running their country. Are we a country or a sub-country?
Nationalise the bastards. They can’t make a profit refining oil? Bullshit.
They transfer their profits offshore, to wherever the tax is least.
Take them over, and hear them whinge! Can’t make a profit? Ha!
Getting real for a minute all of the refineries in Australia are as old as the hills which is part of the motivation for shutting them down. Too many dollars to rebuild or update, we’ll just get it from Indonesia.
They want to sell petrol in Australia?
Well then, refine it here or get out.
I wonder how the Chinese minister liked Abbott’s Latham handshake.
The mining companies too??? More than 80%of there profits go overseas.
Thinking maybe I’ve got it all wrong I popped next door to my very vibrant neighbour, a lady of what some describe as a mature age; a Labor stalwart of many years and very active in the local branch.
‘Betty’, I said could you give me your immediate reaction to the following list of possible candidates if the PM was to be replaced.
‘Chris’ she said ‘happy to do that; Julia’s lost me anyway’.
So we started;
Clare. Who?
Carr. No. Intelligent but boring.
Crean. I wish he’d shut up.
Combet. Boring and wishy washy.
Plibersek. A possibility.
Roxon. All froth and bubble; a tin can kicker.
Shorten. No way (possibly this answer was due to some factional interference at the local city clowncil- choice of candidate)
‘OK Betty what about these?’
Beazley. Why did we ever change.
Beattie. Up himself. (Betty!)
Bracks. He’d still be looking into it.
Gallop. No.
Rees. Seems a nice man.
Wedderburn.Who’s he?
‘Just bring back Kevin’.
Disclaimer; this poll possibly wasn’t scientific.
Speak English; perfunctory knave.
I’ll agree with you on Beazley, even if he hung in there he could of done the Bradbury. I’ll take my advice from the CSIRO though thanks, not glamour granny Betty.
No spikka da lingo?
Not as well as I’d like.
A woman in a bookshop said Rudd was a “creep” though I was inclined to take her as a creep also.
Ruddy-Wan-Kenobi, you are our only hope. I don’t think so.
There’s a strangeness in the air tonight, might be the pills, might be the fear, maybe it’s just spring.
I was stopped by a preacher on the street yesterday. He said “death creeps thought the night like a thief” implying death is after everyone’s VCR. It’s easier to educate nutcases in cyberspace than on the street. I asked him if he watched TV and if he knew what a bomb looked like?
He told me of his miracle brain scan, the indignant doctor.
I thought little of it at the time, I walked on after spitting “Bullshit” with virulence. Today though as I thought about my own family, my own flesh and blood, I cried tears almost of rage at the ignorance that pervades, the insult, it offends my morality.
There is something about today that makes the future seem all that more foreboding.
Sorry you stopped for the religious fantasist – they’ll fuck you up with their floridly imaginative fables if you aren’t quick to set the bullshit filter on ‘high’.
Is the future foreboding? When wasn’t it? As always, the only way to get through it all is to be here, now, cognisant of the passage of the great enemy, Time, in our lives, pasts gone and futures unrealised. And yes, the utter rank ignorance that stalks and pervades is as evident as always, but don’t let it wear you down.
I loved the final scene in the 1984 Robert Altman directed film Secret Honor, where Richard Nixon says “Fuck em, fuck em, fuck em….”, again and again and again. An encouraging attitude I think, and the film is worth watching and not only for the bravura acting performance.
Abbott’s Latham handshake, (not mine), Clark & Dawe last night, “People need to go home, & Palp”.
In Monty Python, death is an obtuse realist. In “The Book Thief” death is the narrator and an extension of the writer’s soul, worked as it were, to the bone over the skies of Europe.
Somehow it seems relevant to mention the story I’ve heard regarding my favourite doors tune. I reckon everyone has a song that takes them back to a place where they can’t ever remember being, when, what, how or why. It was written by a bloke who spun a myth around finding a fragment of manuscript in the streets of Dresden, and resurrecting the work of Tomaso Albinoni; “Adagio in G minor”.
“Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven’s claws”.
I was in a gloriously good mood, Melbourne at twilight, spring as a small white wisp above a glass cone catching the last rays of the run against a blue sky. Warm hands and the pair of us slowed just out of curiosity. The real story of the day was downing pints at the Young & Jackson, rediscovering the joys of alcohol.
Clark’s words though, just sat and wallowed on me last night. I stood up straight out of my chair and put my head in the corner and cried like a child.
The image of my life, and my family’s in the hands of Tony Abbott or as it might be, a megalomaniac General like Macarthur.
Was PJK wrong? Why would Tony Abbott feel the need to do that?
“…This argues, must argue, a hovering Internet of dreams and legends we get our rumours from, and the jokes that arise all over the world at the same time things happen, like Di’s death, or Azaria’s vanishing or Mountbatten’s blowing up.
Question: Where is Lord Mountbatten spending his holidays?
Answer: All over”
(Ellis, 2002, p. 112).
If Julia Gillard is brave Olympic defying cardboard cutting razor blades, then Carr is strong, resounding and reassuring. Not unlike yourself Canguro.
The cameras click intermittently like knowledge eating piranhas yearning for cardboard.
Julia Gillard is All Bran, digestible, keeps you regular.
He’s steady now, and rising. Sliding his model of the republic like an envelope across the table, an offer like everything he is speaking, that requires consideration.
Knowledge now nets the audience. Yes. Resounding. Flex your mighty mind.
Quoting Kevin Rudd. Now they are just confused and flapping, in a barrel, winking. Dancing around a creative middle power! Up to the light the Anglosphere, spinning on a nimble finger, he is an entertainer, a diplomat, a leader.
Look into my eyes! I chuckle! Walk with me into the Asian century and fear not.
‘Who’ is not the appropriate question. It was asked equally of Lincoln, Truman, Blair and Obama.
To reject, say, Roxon, the scourge of Big Tobacco as ‘froth and bubble’ shows you are a moron, and are banned for life.
Get out of my sight, you fucking idiot.
Never come back.
Roxon may have had success with tobacco Bob but what happened to the health care reforms under her guidance.
By the way; Who wasn’t the question it was the response.
One problem with Turnbull : unacceptable to Liberal MPs.
One problem with Rudd :
unacceptable to Labor MPs.
Tough titties for both.
“unacceptable to Labor MPs.”
Name them.
Pretty obvious is it not? The names were named in February in any number of articles.
The obvious point is DQ is that it isn’t all Labor MP’s as you suggest.
Lists in February included
supporters also.
“I’d say to all others who are carrying leadership batons in their backpack, real or imagined, that it would then be time to unite behind the Prime Minister should I lose. Similarly if the result were to go the other way I would expect the same unity as well. The country is bigger than the Australian Labor Party”
This is what Rudd said prior to the February ballot which he lost by a bigger margin than ever before in our history. It was convincing. The message from his Labor colleagues was loud and clear.
Since then Rudd has done nothing but agitate. His wife began by doing an interview in the Fairfax press saying Kevin was a changed man and though he wouldn’t contest the leadership again he would come back if asked. This was followed by that pathetic performance by Joel Fitzgibbon, a Rudd sycophant, who openly threatened Gillard to lift her polling numbers or face replacement as leader. Clearly it’s not just the Opposition that are taking advantage of the tight numbers, but he lost a lot of respect that night. I’ve been a Labor voter all of my adult life and there are many of us that would not countenance another change to leadership before the election. For fuck’s sake it is time to get behind Gillard, who, despite a hostile media, is performing with incredible grace and good humour, and put all of their energy into selling her policies and reforms that should, on merit, win her a second term.
Good post, Jane.
I saw Lee Sales interview Gillard, and admired Julia’s good humour and confidence,even tho Lee’s style was almost hostile, or at best a bit bitchy. She was much kinder to Shorten.
Why all this hostility towards her…Rudd tried but did not get the numbers…he is yesterday’s man, people do not change.
Joel Fitzgibbon’s incredulous face at his own statement and the Q&A audience laughter seals the coffin lid on the great Gillard experiment.
It matters not who leads, they are in for a red-headed stepchild of a beating at the next election.
Jane, did you ever see the series “The Thick of It”, the PM’s position suddenly became untenable and the trigger for the gathering of a Ministry cabal and coup, when a lowly cabinet Minister uttered that “He (the PM) is the best man for the moment ” instead of “is the best man of the moment”.
No matter how you dice and slice it, the Fitzgibbon was going to look foolish giving any answer to the most unimaginative question a journalist can ask. Mouthing rock solid support means nothing, as this discussion concerning the return of Rudd is evidence of. That’s why I advocate the Etubrute method, its final (well apart from the occassional ghostly haunting afterwards) but think of what you save on pension outlays.
If only the ALP could offer the poetic cursing equivalent of a Malcolm Tucker it would make this whole discussion worthwhile.
These are not normal times. Our political class – by acting as if nothing has changed and that they can go on behaving as before – is living in a complete fantasy land.
I agree Jane. Well said.
Does anyone want to venture beyond the realms of Parliamentary Democracy? Lately I have the feeling we are starting to touch the sides of the confines of this model. A different leader, two or three parties, the electorate do not seem to be enthused (this is not necessarily a bad thing).
This talk of leadership, especially when it concerns the ALP, seems to be driven somewhat, although maybe in the distance background, an attempt to capture something else the ghost of ALP past perhaps, the present is humdrum (again not a bad thing) and the future is…?
The electorate seem to be focusing on their own lives (again not a bad thing) instead of the future, short term goals, both Gillard and Abbott have got the measure of that, do we want to ram vision down their throats for the sake of it?
allthumbs, I absolutely want to venture with you beyond the realms of our parliamentary democracy, at least in its current form. I don’t know yet what the new model is, but there is one. As a member of the Labor party and as someone who runs a community based membership and advocacy organisation I think you are really onto something. My organisation is one of those which has been campaigning on the NDIS, and its organisations like us that are the repositories of lived experience, and we are thriving. Our membership is growing every week because we give people a reason to join us – we are a way that they can be part of change, we are a way that they can be involved, we connect with them, we connect them together, we galvanize them. We’re part of a social movement.
I compare that with my experience of the Labor party, and I just don’t think that Labor can call itself a movement based party anymore. I see an organisation that takes its remaining members for granted and abuses them. I see an organisation that is entirely driven by its parliamentary parties. I see an organisation that claims to represent all kinds of people with absolutley no authority at all. I see an organisation that is so focused on power it has forgotten on the “organisation” part. I see an organisation that cannot be changed from within, because with each generation there is one just behind them shoring up their own careers, picking up on the need for change as a way to get their name up in lights. There’s no vibrancy. There’s no energy. Dissent is not tolerated.
Groups like ours are thriving because people don’t see their lived experiene and the issues that are important in their lives reflected in our political parties. They sure as hell don’t find that political parties give them a way to have a voice.
In fact, the longer I spend in this area the more and more I see how little influcence individuals have within the parliamentary and party structures. Those of us who want to work for change can get more done outside those strucutres than within. It is certainly more rewarding.
Rather than Labor claiming to speak on behalf of disadvantaged communities, why isn’t Labor working to support those communities to have a voice of their own? Now that would be something worth being part of.
Keating rightly said no vision no leadership. When he offered to provide half in Copmmonwealth funding to reposition the ugly Cahill expressway underground John Fahey said “I am sick of this vision bullshit” Typical Liberal. They are always in a time warp
Thera are only two possible candidates for PM Gillard or Rudd.
Gillard cannot win even with 10 more NDIS announcements & more #cashforyou handouts, and more Ashby findings . In fact Gillard will take the ALP to NSW type disaster, not quite a QLD disaster. Taking the ALP to a position that potentially they will never recover from as the Greens begin to dominate the inner city seats of our major cities. There will be continual leaks and undermining from now until the election.
Gillard is gone already in the minds of most people I meet. Never have I seen such irrational refusals to vote for the ALP unless a leader goes.
Yes there are alternative candidates but in the eyes of the public, it will have the feared “faceless men” stamp all over it. Besides which has any polling shown that any candidate besides Rudd can put ALP in a winning position? Believe me if it did Julia Gillard would no longer be leader.
It has been said that anti-Rudd Ministers do not fear an election loss under Rudd but an election win. Which is foolish unless they think an Abbot government is better for Australia for the next decade? Given that they are set on giving the next government the keys to the media regulation bus.
The egotistical wimps on the front bench need to suck it up and move to place Rudd as leader. Take the time to impose structures that will avoid his previous tendencies to micro-manage and to chase headlines and avoid off the cuff policy thought bubbles(Gillard’s folly as well). Take the chance to impose conditions on his behaviour before he becomes leader without these conditions.
Rudd or bust
Quite so – if Rudd was not Rudd he might make a good leader.
If he behaved like Julia Gillard, for example, he would be able to romp home in the poll next year.
And pigs might fly.
He cannot help himself, he cannot help being psychopathic. A pity, but there you go.
He might change; and those pigs are now doing aerobatics.
So c’mon DQ, what did he ever do to you to provoke such vitriol?
What vitriol? Rudd is fine by me as a backbencher; he was a competent minister and despite his personality a useful member of society and the government.
But forget him ever being PM again.
Psychopathic?
Look at the scientific/medical definition, and then tell me he is not.
Rudd:
Antisocial, criminal, amoral?
(This from my Dr, conveniently sitting across the breakfast table from me)
I don’t think so!
Try looking up vitriol; you may get a different definition from your source other than the widely accepted one of ‘bitter, deep seated ill-will
Some of the characteristics of psychopaths “Superficial and grandiose notions of themselves; pathological lying and conning; impulsive behavior showing a need for stimulation without regard to consequence; a parasitic lifestyle that lacks personal goals; shallow emotions with little sign of sympathy, remorse or guilt; poor behavioral controls” Gillard fits more of these than Rudd, who certainly has the last. Describes many politicians of all persuasions doesn’t it? Perhaps even describes political parties in general?
No; she is capable of emotional depth.
Where does ‘criminal’ feature in the definition?
The plain facts are that he registers emotion only on an intellectual level. He has never shed a tear in his life that was not connected to his personal frustration. I defy anyone to deliver the apology speech without a tear being shed. Except for a psychopath.
In a number of dictionary’s and reference books.
Psychopaths are not necessarily criminal. Many work their way to the top of organisations through sheer hard work and their total lack of emotion and remorse. Conscience is not an issue.
Quite an interesting opinion piece in the Fairfax media this morning,
‘Party of the people beaten by the people of the party’.
It’s a wonderful line Chris.
Unfortunately it may become a permanent by-line for this government.
You’re going the right way about turning this place into a house of conversation, lest it become a house of lies!!!
Quoth the seagull, ‘Winston Churchill’.
Hello William, I’m afraid this is another of those times where I find your posts a little too cryptic.
The Churchill reference was lost on me too. I even googled!
Could you please explain?
Rudd leaked. Rudd sabotaged. The team needs to be kept alive for meaning to be kept alive. Even with Abbott in government, Labor must stay Labor. Rudd means nihilistic destruction of the dream and the purpose because he himself is not an agent of that meaning. He is a saboteur. If the congealed unit known as the Australian people want nihilism, and they do, Labor is under no obligation to provide it. Meaning and authenticity are the attack and defence, as well as the waiting period in the barracks.
None of the workplace laws apply to people on more than I think about $120,000. No unfair dismissal applies to them. It’s ok to get rid of a CEO at any time. They can afford it, it is expected, they were lucky to hold the position if only for a while. But for a former leader to come back and start sacking team members on the basis of personal revenge is a wholly different industrial relations issue. The workings of the organisation itself is at stake.
‘Labor must stay Labor’
Gosh.
I’m inclined to think you must be an operative for the kind of people mentioned in the‘Party of the people beaten by the people of the party’;the ones that “a majority of whom appear inclined to sit pat and essentially do nothing, waiting to be swept into the ashcan of history”
There’s a few of us from the dwindling membership that don’t think your way.
Doc Evatt was my great, great uncle. I’ve had a few years to think on these issues. Anyone can invent a fictitious demographic operating on a wave of pure fatalism, impervious to circumstance or thought. But the aim here is to exist as real individuals with common aims and that involves addressing real issues. Your glorified, rough and tough working class man can do with workplace rights just as much as the cossetted, inner city elite. It’s the same issue, or theme, for whomever it effects, directly or indirectly. If Rudd’s not feeling it, if he is not authentic, if he is not batting for the team, he is just a sitting duck for the Rupert forces. His vanity will bring down the whole show. It’s about Australia and Labor and the actual lived history and the people and processes said history has evolved. You have to build your foundation on the quality of the character/s, not the tinpot veneer. Some are people of character, others aren’t. It all comes down to the quality of the thinking. Not the cleverness of it, but the quality.
How do you keep that continuity of quality thinking, if I am right in interpreting quality thinking as having an assured “authenticity” of purpose, in regards to working people and their quality of life, when so much has changed in the realms of capitalism over the last 30 years? There has been a revolution, initiated and sponsored by the elites that has been imposed upon and accepted as common currency by the working class(es). The whole free market globalization methodisation has been taken up with such verve by all concerned, including Governments of all persuasions, it was promoted as a revolution, a cure-all, an evolutionary step, a fulfilment of a plan, an eventuality, a fait complli ,all of the above, all at the same time, and relished and to some degree championed by the working class. The left wing Governments thought by practicing the new form of Capitalism they were automatically mitigating the extreme possible downside effects, when in effect they were being complicit in making it palatable and more easily digestible to their own constituency. I consider Keating and Hawke and Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as the Trojan horses, “quality thinkers” set the tone for Lathams, Rudds and Gillards. True Believers are on all sides, and should be avoided at all costs, check with Eric Hoffer.
I am only part way through the second sentence but feel the need to butt in – the process has already been abstracted. History is only the stories of those who lived, just like there are only those of us here now, above and beyond any demographic or popular push or impulse. There is not anything else other than what exists on the ground. The working class is no more than a common situation and agenda, it’s not a thing unto itself. It’s all about the best way to live whether on an individual scale or a large one. Do you want to shuffle off down the mine and live the working class dream? Neither do I. But the politics of it, as well as the cultures that emerge from it, speak to experience and it is there that the value of the concept of the working class lies. A good story tells a story. Doc Evatt came out of a bog end pub in Maitland. It was supposedly the black sheep arm of a family tree that can be traced back to Charlemaigne, although not by blood. On the other side of the family, the country bumpkin side from a one horse town, it turns out I’m related to Camilla Parker Bowles. Three brothers, in a today national trust listed castle, inexplicably packed up and moved to Australia one day. As Dirk Gently said, it’s all interconnected.
Excuse the interuption, I’ll get back to reading the rest.
Hello Reader1, as a Labor supporter I’m going to have to follow on from Chris and allthumbs. Their concerns and questions are my concerns as well. I’m afraid after reading your post, admittedly unfinished, that you make no case at all.
What you have done is offer a kind of garbled uni-speak that simply makes no sense. It certainly doesn’t address what I would see as the most important issue – that of complicity. Nor do you offer any connection between your theory and the realpolitik of Labor voters, such as myself, deeply disillusioned with the present state of affairs.
I guess what I’m saying is that if you, a Labor woman, cannot speak to other Labor people, such as myself, then what hope do we have of reaching that larger populace?
Because I can tell you now, statements like this – “History is only the stories of those who lived”, or “a good story tells a story” – just isn’t going to cut it.
I was aiming for garbled uni-speak, bitch.
You thought rudeness was the appropriate response here?!
How strange and unfortunately how very typical of this blog. Bob’s disappointment must be huge.
It’s no wonder you have so many enemies here Reader1. Your attitude sucks.
I thought rudeness was fucking appropriate despite Bob’s delicacy.
Lacking any insight it’s easy to see how some resort to abuse.
Why, R1?
I’ll have to google Eric Hoffer.
Is “compensate for lack of meaning in one’s own life” as a reason given on par with “some people just can’t get their act together”? You do get your meaning from the outside world, it comes down to the means of doing so which involves an effective identification of what the meaning is to be used for. Hitler was presumably trying to get the most out of life but beyond all morality, he was going about it in the wrong way. There is a purpose to meaning. I don’t think you can necessarily discount every crusade that’s ever been undergone on the basis of one or two bad eggs. There may be other factors at work. Situation is everything, it’s just that all situations are infinitely complex and impossible to get a handle on. But there are definite recurring themes in terms of people or animals sharing reactions in common in certain situations.
According to Hoffer, “J.B.S. Haldane counts fanaticism among only four really important inventions made between 3000BC and 1400AD…And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead-an instrument of resurrection”
The other 3 obvioulsy being floaties, the espresso machine and the Marquis de Sade’s laundress.
I could use the old saying ‘you can choose your friends but you cant choose your relatives’ but that would be rude, wouldn’t it.
Doc Evatt AND Camilla Parker Bowles.
Wow!
(I had a horse once that bore an uncanny resemblance to the latter)
History, of course we all have and make.
Look at your irrational scribblings and comments from today, that’s history in the making.
Anyway the truth is you have ‘come out’ as a Carr-o-phile.
But it still doesn’t justify rash words, saboteur, leaked et al.
Unless you are channeling some message from that past.
The other thing is applied your rules almost the entire Cabinet would be eliminated; hardly a worker by your definition among them.
When did I define a worker? That’s your squalid handywork I’m in the process of resisting.
Hey Reader1; will you approve?
Of course, with the labour vote at an all time wane with delusion at an allusion with the tide going on and about, the bottle finally will fill with sand. We all know the sand runs out when dry and the bottle left suspended upside down.
Can you now see my analogy with an egg timer. And yet; we all know that bringing the egg to boil and then turning the heat off and wait for three minutes, the eggs will be cooked to perfection. That is how it is with the ALP. Any fool can see that.
It is only the Trotskyites who keep walking around with an ice pick who just can’t seem to see the sea for the water. Wake up before it is too late and turn the egg time around. (again and again)
Carr. Shorten. The Beaz.
Job done.
gerard, that is a riot of a post!
I laughed till there were tears in my eyes.
Great job!
I googled Eric Hoffer,very interesting.
Somewhere he says that self-righteouness is rooted in self-doubt and insecurity.
Plenty of self-righteousness on this blog
Holier than thou.
First I use the term working class very broadly. I am middle class down to my fingertips with under the nails maybe the beginning of some bourgeois dirt. But I have a working class background and poor to boot, but I still consider myself working class, the emphasis on working, as a necessity, not as personal fulfilment or something to fill the hours to make me feel a useful member of society, work is an original biblical curse laid on that layabout Adam, you will earn everything by the sweat of your brow, or the stained shirt and tie. So as I said emphasis on working. So the term “working” has changed considerably and miners are not a good example as they seem to earn pretty well these days and though it is hard work here in Australia as opposed to say in China, they earn pretty well in a fairly safe environment from what I can gather.
History never goes away, it is embedded forever, it is a determinant of contemporary behaviour and I think working is no longer able to sustain those histories and the commensurate stories, because a lot of work in the Western world is a sham, it has nothing to do with productivity or even progress if they be your measures, much less meaningful human fulfilment. The attraction of someone like Doug Cameron in the past was his history, his from the ground up shopfloor experience. I know when I see real work and real workers and I am glad I am not one of them, but they have no purchase or real representation in today’s ALP for all of the “working families” mantra being chanted over and over again. That particular strata of working class are going to slip back into the underclass, witness Europe, everyone is going back down the ladder, that may be an inititative for a call to arms and a resurgence in the working class representation in the Labour parties. Although if Greece is an indicator, that trust has been lost, and I think there will be a grass roots movement that will put paid to the likes of Social Democratic parties and the Greens worldwide. They have identified the enemy and the collaborators.
I think Rudd’s attraction to the electorate was a sort of reminder of Labour history and Labour values, a shopwindow reflection of the past but dressed up in a suit with a middle class articulate voice. He wasn’t a miner, or a storeman-packer, or an overall with a bullhorn voice, he wasn’t Doug Cameron, but a lot of the working class have come a long way and we thought he had the brains and manner to “negotiate” with the big end of town. For the men and women in suits he represented their “working class” and a rich wife to boot. Gillard is a reminder of where we were, and so is Rudd, so is Abbott come to think of it,the world has moved on.
Part of my concern is that I no longer think the MP or a political party is a suitable repository for what you are talking about. You are going to have an incredible number of articulate, educated, disappointed working people in Europe with no representation, they may tend to share their stories among eachother and find some other way.
By the way R1 you do know I am not Fedallah right, I may need testimonials.
This really is a wonderful post allthumbs. You seem to have written the lives and thoughts of myself and many I know.
I suppose, sadly, it highlights the difficulty of the situation that no-one I know is able to offer any answers to the questions you pose.
It’s difficult to remain positive during these times.
I think it becomes even more so when so many have difficulty articulating the questions in the first place.
But a great post allthumbs. I wish there were more of them.
Repository for what? What’s Europe got to do with it? With sufficient information and a conducive environment, people will naturally stand up for themselves, history will always produce in accordance with itself, and all it takes is a spark of comprehension/connection to reawaken what is already there. The cultural way of being of the Australian “working class” (not quite the right term in this country if you ask me, with its class structure that is a whiff askew) is still very much in existence and in good form. The global propaganda machine works through and via morality, not outside of it and it takes a level of subversion to withstand the juggernaut. There is nothing more subversive than honesty. Australian cultural values, on the ground, allow one a bit of laxness in the social nicety department. Subversion comes easily. It’s just a question of being reminded. Gillard doesn’t have it in her blood, Rudd gave off the tantalising waft of it in his, but people such as Carr both are it and are the uncoverers of it.
I’m starting to believe you are the actor who played Harold on Neighbours.
A repository for real individuals and their lived experiences. I do get a sense of it with Shorten in bringing about the beginning of the NDIS, I get a sense he has listened and been affected by a lot of personal stories that gave some added impetus and urgency in his voice when he spoke about it.
Europe may show a new way of organizing and representing those that feel they have been disenfranchised and lead to exactly that kind of subversiveness you are referring to.
I’m not sure what we are disagreeing on?
I’m hoping you are Mina Loy.
allthumbs; Bill Shorten did listen ans did involve real people in his time as Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities.
But as I keep pointing out it matters not what the historical types in the ALP think the unpalatable fact is that the actual voters don’t see him as PM.
Carr is a bit naughty, what with the kabuki’s and what have you. Frank really hated that. Frank is the gauge.
I have never read so much pseudo intellectual claptrap. except for Rudd or Bust. Get real or self destruct, Plain and Simple. You are all drowning in your own bullshit. Stop philosophizing yourselves into oblivion. Carr is a freak physically and intellectually. He fucked NSW
Don’t blanket bomb shad. I’ll agree we are witnessing some horrific stuff here – but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Let me help you toss out the crap – there’s too much for one man:
“the process has already been abstracted.
History is only the stories of those who lived, just like there are only those of us here now, above and beyond any demographic or popular push or impulse The working class is no more than a common situation and agenda, it’s not a thing unto itselfwhich involves an effective identification of what the meaning is to be used forbut beyond all morality, he was going about it in the wrong way. There is a purpose to meaning.Situation is everything, it’s just that all situations are infinitely complex and impossible to get a handle on”
Ah, who am I kidding – just toss everything Reader has said this afternoon. But keep this for the scrapbook, my favourite: “history will always produce in accordance with itself”.
I saw Carr speak for 90 minutes on environmental issues several years ago.
He was awful, simply awful.
I’m afraid to say shad that you are, for the most part, correct as to problems encapsulated by this conversation.
As a supporter of the Left it’s very difficult to confess that to a political adversary.
Without philosophizing Shad, can you maybe outline, sketch, no too much detail needed, don’t want to drag your work rate down, what exactly do you mean by “Get real or self destruct”, what is the real composed of, in 60 words or less please. Please don’t go on and on like Bananaman tended to do.
If I were shad I’d go with this as the beginnings, or outline, of a workable definition:
“[A repository] for real individuals and their lived experiences. I do get a sense of it with Shorten in bringing about the beginning of the NDIS, I get a sense he has listened and been affected by a lot of personal stories that gave some added impetus and urgency in his voice when he spoke about it.”
And I would definitely give this the widest berth possible:
“Situation is everything, it’s just that all situations are infinitely complex and impossible to get a handle on”.
But that’s just me. Let’s wait and see what shad comes up with. He’s been given so much to work with here it’s impossible not to see him slam the Left with their own ammunition.
You should never have made the challenge allthumbs.
Not even to protect Reader’s mangled ex cathedra’s.
By the way, I thought your post of 4.11 contained some real insight. There were a few sentences of real serious game.
It’s too bad that they’re going to get lost in this distraction, this parlour game.
All of these kind words from everywhere today are making me suspicious and quite uncomfortable U1966. I haven’t felt so loved since I left my parents back on Krypton.
Nevertheless if I’m being used as a foil to goad R1 then I want no part of it.Got it?
goad?
goad?
You insult me with such an assessment of what’s going on here.
Do you think I have not stood where you are now?
Do you?
allthumbs – let me be perfectly frank; I do not compliment lightly, the words I used were true. You are, by my reckoning, the sharpest one here; witty, clever and well versed.
You are defending foolish words – irrespective of their author.
I “goad” no-one.
“Goading” is not necessary in this case.
Look at the words; their arrangement and their meaning, and you tell me that they serve an ameliorating function.
Look me in the eye allthumbs and write here, in one sentence, that they are blameless and worthy of your defense.
Do it and I shall leave this place.
You have my word on that.
If you should answer “yes”, that their defense its legitimate, and dishonour yourself in the process, then I will welcome my exit.
For what would be the reason to stay?
Are they worthy allthumbs?
Yes or no?
In or out?
You really are full of shit, Unethical 1966. allthumbs can see right through your wedge politics.
Wedge??
Wedge?!?
You, DQ, are the the dimmest man it as ever been my misfortune to encounter.
This is NOT about wedge, you preposterous baboon! This is NOT about choosing personalities, and picking sides. I don’t give a rats arse about who the author is – it’s all is about the ideas, the words, the arguments.
It’s all about being honest and trying to communicate an idea sensibly, responsibly and HONESTLY!
Reader’s paragraphs overflowed with liquid crap. We can all see it. With sentences so mangled and so oblique that they crossed over into the realm of non meaning, into sheer nonsense.
Pure and simple.
And unarguable.
By protecting the language, instead of exposing it AND removing it from the conversation, you have opened the door to all our political adversaries, those like shad, who will now rightfully mock us, and have every one of their cliche’s about the Left’s propensity for abstract, pompous and irrelevant narratives confirmed.
Well done.
Good job.
And you talk of “wedge”!?
Good God!
We saw NSW, we saw Queensland, we can imagine WA and all Reader can say in response to 4 legit questions is “History is only the stories of those who lived” or some other esoteric gaia shite!!
Politically I’m on your side but with language like that I’m further out than the worst of the Catallaxy crew.
Heaven help us.
Fools everywhere.
Unhinged 1966 is so transparent it is a wonder it can even see itself in the bathroom mirror with all its mates.
That’s the way, you brutalised Cat’s Arse!!
Go hard at the issues!
Tackle them head-on!
It’s arguments like that that have the Conservatives trembling.
Look! Bananaman and Co. are all aquiver!!
You miserable excuse!
Goad Goad
Wedge Wedge
Toad Toad
Sledge Sledge
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Untitled should fuck off from this blog.
Take that you Conservatives!!
Quixote’s hardest punch!
You’re having a laugh, Liberal.
Carr had a different set of problems in NSW, and a lot of them were Howard as PM.
Carr is a potential PM. I think Gillard is the one, along with most of Labor’s caucus. But if it appears that by mid 2013 Gillard has not emerged triumphant, and that is possible, Carr is an option.
Personally, I think Gillard is there until 2019 or thereabouts.
Reason What meet F. Right;
Ask Doctor Who and he’ll tell you that Why is a no good slimy, no good double crossing back stabbing bastard and Why won’t stick his neck out for Nobody: not for the sake of Knowing; Not for George, Paul or John; not for Ringo.
Hardly A. Brandis is sitting next to the venerable Mild C. Rash.
Here in Ausablanca we can’t seem to see the forest from the cattle. Rocking in on Qantas is Laszlo on the wings.
The narrator has left the building. All that remains are the buzzing fluorescence; The moths rapping on plastic. All culture snores although abstaining from blinking when poked with burnt stick.
Rigby’s rice is kaput, stomped into grout and carpeted over. The furniture: a silent testament.
Crabbing all the way along the beach; clutching knives.
Horizontally we sleep.
Awake; we are the dreamers.
In a desperate cardboard cut-out moment; the power up and bolted out of service; all went dark and embarrassment prevailed. Though she would emerge from the darkness, sure and clear; certain, for a moment one ladies heart must have stopped and feared for the worst, at least mine did cease to palp if but for a moment upon the realisation that in an instant; the cardboard crushing piranhas armed with cameras; distilled in dupe; became the grassy knoll.
Bob Carr can pick up the anglo-sphere like a basketball and spin it round effortlessly on his little finger and he eats lots of carrots to help him see in the dark.
Rudd makes a great FM, Carr quotes him often. Gillard a staunch reformer; relieved of the strains of leadership which she is just not cast for; was doomed to fail at, alas: there will be other females in good time who will be given the chance to prosper. Both Rudd and Gillard have dropped the ball. Turnbull keeps passing it back, encouraging them on from the bench; like a wife torn between her husband’s team, the overall excitement created by the rough shaking; short-panted antics and a growing interest in sport in general.
Required is an admission; an absolution and a clean slate. The policies that the electorate demands will write themselves in 6 weeks.
Who: Fuck off Up Start.
Reason: No, Four M. Years.
Brandis: Hahahahahaha. I can’t feel my face.
Right: Fucking moths
Brandis: My that is a right purple isn’t it?
Rash: You should see the size of them in Hong Kong.
John, Paul & George: Isn’t it good? Norwegian Wood?
Ringo: Knock, knock.
Nixon S. Revolver: “Don’t mothers make good fathers?”
All: Amen. Sweet Dreams. Goodnight. Say Goodnight to your ladies for me. Goodnight.
All depart, via a multifarious assortment of passages, airlocks and tubes, leaving the paintings to watch the caviar be consumed by the cockroaches upon and stubby dented furniture.
Mate, whatever you’re on, it seems to have worked for ya. A bit like the after-effects of the roach powder snorted by Bill Burrows in Naked Lunch.
The Soil: Three parts isolation, A bush-walk, Proust, 5 plastic bags of lemons fill the rest up with ignorance; and stir.
Then one must put it in the sun, hold a mirror to it and wait till it catches fire.
Consume ablaze or extinguished but always with a mind to be entertained.
Yeh, I could go for that.
Thanks for the film referrals Noble Canguro.
Soil, thou dost flatter me unnecessarily. Indeed, it is thee who are of noble heart and mind, whereas I am nought but a mere journeyman, a poor scribbler who mislaid his way at the critical juncture and has wandered in the wilderness and confusion of the second reality hitherto.
Can’t wait for Bob’s return. He can ban the lot of you.
Personally, I never understood the appeal of Rudd to voters and I still don’t. I do know though that this constant focus on leadership reflects an organisation in crisis. Just as it would if Labor were any other kind of organisation. As a friend of mine who works within the Labor party structure – said to me this week: “Most politicians get started for the right reasons. But then something changes, and it becomes about them.” And like ANY organisation, when the people who are making decisions are thinking about their OWN interests and not those of the organisation, well we know where that leads.
Why is it that political parties seem to think that the fundamental prinicples of organisations don’t apply to them? Is it that they think they’re just too large and institutionalised to fail? Organisations needs to have a clear sense of who they are and what their purpose is and there has to be consistency between their walk and their talk. Organisations don’t just run themselves, and no-one seems to have their eye on the Labor “organisation”. And the people who feel that most are the members.
The ALP lists no less than 15 values on its website. No surer way to signal as an organisation that it either doesn’t know who it is or is trying to be everything to everybody, or (more likel) both.
Labor needs it’s organisational arm to be strong in order to have any authority to claim to represent the people it claims to represent. Without that organisational arm strong and vibrant and active, it truly can not continue to call itself a movement.
The ALP needs to list more values on its website. It’s the only way. I have a few suggestions -
1. Organisation
2. Values
3. Vision
4. More Values
5. Leadership
6. Other
What about a statement of what the ALP will not tolerate, condone or support. If you have to have spin doctors they should earn their money, I see many a case of spontaneous combustion occurring in Sussex street. The Libs are so much better at this stuff, they have no shame.
Food for thought there.
In my opinion the party is on life support right now.
I feel that we have an ideologically suspect, moribund and morbidly self protective Labor caucus to a great extent.
Failing to connect to the ordinary voter.
Something needs to spring up to resist the lunacy of the current administration and its selfish short term attitudes and operations.
Unless Labour reinvents itself as a party of the social contract one will have only the Greens as a place to go, for all their shortcomings.
Just across the ditch the NZ Labour party had a review recently. Having lost considerable ground electorally since Helen Clark’s defeat, they had a review. Sound familiar?
The difference is that their one is already on the way.
Some key things are already in play: The caucus can’t roll a leader by ambush. No challenger will ever reach the new 70 per cent threshold to roll a leader. Mucking about with challenges is counter productive
The bulk of things that seem relevant to the situation here will be put to the conference there in November.
From what I can gather the proposals won’t get rolled like ours here did.
The main points; The branches equaling the caucus by having 40 per cent of the vote gives the activists ownership. The affiliates get 20 per cent. Because every vote is preferential, no parliamentarian, union or faction boss can control the vote. Deals between factions can’t be delivered under this form of voting.
Policy: The party sets the vision and policy framework. Caucus must implement it, allowing for practicalities. Meaningless remit-making is gone. A vision is set and everyone gets on with it.
Branches and Electorate: All the main action goes to newly-created regional organising hubs. Campaigns and actions are the norm.
Membership: Apart from the membership, groups, not just unions, can affiliate. Any group. Arts, you name it. A more direct way of drawing attention.
Candidate selection: Previously faction bosses could do deals where talent is traded for loyalty. The new directive is: Don’t do tacky compromises, get the best candidate.
Just saying.
Thanks for posting that Chris, very interesting. Do you know if they are including any development of activism outside the party.
I I imagine that there are many groups who might be sympathetic to Labor but not feel it was appropriate to affiliate, but if Labor was investing in supporting those various groups to build their activist and advocacy and other skills, that would have many similar benefits. Here in my own state the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice used to,do sone good stuff in that area but they’ve closed now. I know there is someone from the Green’s doing some stuff in this space. But I can’t get anyone interested,
Here’s the thing U1966 it is quite easy. Although contrary to what R1 thinks I am not the Harold guy from Neighbours, I just got updated on what that means and I am crestfallen. Nevertheless I am shaped by my past and my upbringing and I feel a sense of chivalry (very old fashioned concept, maybe I am a sexist prick) to step in, as it seems to cast a cloud across my honour (another old fashioned concept) and the truth of my allthumbs identity. Doubts are being raised even by Ellis, and I have communicated with him privately of late in regards to his birthday, so I was surprised that he even entertained for a second that I was Fedallah. I wouldn’t know, or to tell you candidly be bothered to husband multiple identities, my single me is team enough without having others sitting on the bench. You can take apart R1 word by word if you wish, and if she plays, well you are all adults. But there is no need to compare my words with R1’s and award or deduct points. There is a lot of language used here by various posters that I have to read over and over again to get to the nub of what they mean, that probably undermines my seemingly easy brilliance, but so be it, I get the gist eventually, I even get Soil although he takes multiple readings, and I am not always convinced of the necessary investment of time in the deciphering of his Ginsberg type soliloquies, so now I limit him to two readings and if I don’t get it, I blame his esoteric fog as opposed to my personal thickyness. Last and not least of all R1 is one of the few people that can actually make me laugh, she has a great sense of humour, that whole Buber thing was great and to this day I have no idea what Buber means. I think everyone should stick around and play nice, and let’s face it everyone knows when they don’t play nice, but for the sake of Ellis and the traffic to this site and in respect to those that read and don’t comment and most importantly a hefty return on my intended investment in Shakespeare in the town or country of your choice series let the germane discussion continue. And Doug, thanks I think?
So be it allthumbs- let your equivocation symbolise your dishonour.
allthumbs – it appears I have misjudged you.
I am more surprised than I can say.
Take note of this article from one of Labors gods
The man who would not die
by: Phillip Adams
From: The Australian
July 28, 2012 12:00AM
Increase Text Size
Decrease Text Size
Print
Gregoriy Rasputin
The court of the last Russian tsar found it difficult to dispose of the problematic mad monk, Gregoriy Rasputin. Source: Supplied
TONY Abbott is oft described as the Mad Monk. He is not, however, the original. A much madder monk was Rasputin – seen by court critics as an evil genius with far too much influence on Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Alexandra.
Hence the increasingly desperate attempts of a group of aristocratic assassins to kill him. As the story goes, they first fed him enough cyanide to kill five – which had little effect. So they shot him. When one of the lads later checked on the corpse it opened one eye and lunged at him. So it was necessary to shoot him again. Three times in the back. Rasputin fell again – but after a little while the messianic mystic tried to struggle to his feet. So they energetically clubbed him and, according to one account, cut off his penis. The combination of clubbing and circumcision appeared fatal but to be on the safe side they bound the body, wrapped it in a carpet and heaved it into the icy River Neva. Whereupon he revived, did a Houdini and struggled free, only to finally drown.
I do not tell this story to suggest it’s time for the Libs to rearrange their leadership – or to remind them of Tony’s tenacious hold on his job and his never-say-die approach to politics. Just the opposite. I want to remind the Labor conspirators who tried to kill Kevin Rudd that, thus far, they’ve failed. Repeatedly. Though apparently dead after the coup, he declined to lie down. Kev was not kaput. Hence the more recent assassination – in the form of hysterical attacks on his character. You’ll recall Gillard, Swan, Roxon and Crean – among others – trying to outdo each other in their verbal frenzies. Rudd was a sociopath. A werewolf. The Anti-Christ. He ate babies. After poisoning his reputation, shooting and clubbing him, they tossed him into the icy Lake Burley Griffin.
While all this killed off the immediate challenge to Gillard’s leadership (sic) it did bugger all to save it. Kev’s popularity with the public survived and Julia’s popularity (sic) continued to plummet. Which means they’ll have to kill Kevin. Again. They must persuade caucus and the community that he’s not the Messiah but just a naughty boy. And learning the lessons of history – of Rasputin’s reluctance to accept retirement – they’ll have to tackle things (and him) differently.
Sex scandals have been somewhat effective in Canberra’s past but aren’t so popular since the hapless attempts to sink Slipper. In any case Rudd is notoriously, intensely moralistic. All that churchy, Bonhoeffer stuff. Even when he was caught somewhat tiddly in a New York strip club his popularity soared. (Because he wasn’t seen as so intensely moralistic.) Given Bob Carr’s closeness to Washington and his aversion to his predecessor as foreign minister, perhaps he could have Kev taken out with a drone? No, that wouldn’t work – POTUS personally approves the targets and Obama and Rudd get on pretty well.
I suggest more traditional weapons be deployed. A silver bullet. A stake through the heart. Didn’t Roxon say Rudd was a vampire? Whatever the approach, it has to work this time. You don’t want Kevin to get a reputation among caucus members for rising from the dead. Because, if he can manage that, perhaps he can help the Labor Government rise from the dead as well.
Resurrection goes very well in politics. Look at Lazarus Howard – or the second-time-lucky career of Jeff Kennett. Politicians whose rigor seemed to have been mortis abound – most famously John Winston Howard’s hero, Winston Spencer Churchill. This time Rudd has to be nailed. No, that’s not a good term, giving that being nailed goes with resurrection. But you know what I mean. And so do Gillard, Swan, et al.
How to kill off Kev? It’ll be even harder this time – when he’s not offering himself as a target.
So just imagine Shad if it should come to pass, somehow a challenge is arranged and a vote is taken and Rudd wins comfortably, better than Tony did for instance. The press conference goes well Plibersek is the deputy, half the cabinet goes to the backbench and Rudd has to zip to address Parliament and think about calling an election. I just imagine that line from Redford in The Candidate,”what do I do now?”. Or will that be in Adams’column next week? I love a soap opera, I’m in Neighbours you know! Give us the sneak preview Shad, how does it all go, swimmingly?
He can draw on the talented ones on the backbench and also make good use of those that are gifted enough that supported him and with his omnipresent style resurrect the party into the new age that the others unfortunately for selfish and short sighted reasons can’t grasp
Once Roxen and Burke show enough contrition Rudd can show his ecclesiastical nature to the public and allow them back into the fold
Rudd revival is pure fantasy. Those pigs are winning trophies for areobatics now.
Without him its pure fantasy to suggest that Labor has any chance of avoiding annihilation.
They have two chances and in my view neither of them involve bringing back Rudd.
Chris, my opinion is that with Rudd, Labor are sunk. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue though – I can’t see Rudd ever getting the numbers or being able to reconcile those that have been too public with their dislike for him.
That’s not to say that Gillard, who I like very much, will fare much better.
If things carry on the way they have thus far; a real and perceived, bumbling along toward election day, then Labor are staring a catastrophic election result square in the eye.
The problem is a deeper one and surprisingly it has been mentioned in this blog by several posters, yourself included. It’s a shame that the personal enmity between several posters has blocked those issues from view.
I believe that Labor must not only change direction but also the way they speak to people; the way they argue their case.
Pushing all of my chips into the middle I suggest this – they should behave as if they are already dead in the water. That will free them up to push policy irrespective of public opinion. It will give the impression of purpose and conviction. The air of indifference will look like courage – no, it will be courage.
I guess what I’m saying is with the game already lost, Labor have nothing left to lose.
I can see no other way and I totally agree with Untitled, 1966 who spoke of the carnage in NSW and Queensland, and with My Girl Pearl who spoke of the absolute necessity in maintaining a strong organisational arm.
These are very real concerns inadequately addressed by those purporting to speak for Labor.
I havent posted much until recently but I found some of the comments by people who claim to be Labor supporters; the venom and bitterness, quite jaw dropping.
The party in my time has always been one of robust debate, but sour and personal comments from people who should know better, unless they are imposters posing as wise sage, is not debate.
I think pushing policy is a good idea that should be happening in any case. Gough didn’t wait around holding his finger to the wind, waiting anxiously for some spotty advisor or stacked focus group to see if the coast was clear.
The organisational question?
If you want an air of indifference try dealing with Labor Connect boys and girls via the website or the ‘social media’, they are so ‘indifferent’ that people don’t get a response.
Bearing in mind that facebook and Twitter is being enthusiastically promoted as the way to communicate, the whole country will be run by trolls!
Chris, I don’t think that the venom and bitterness expressed here has anything to with being Labor or Liberal, it’s just individual people, unhappy with their lot, who seem hellbent on unsettling other posters, writing anonymously makes it easy for some to be vindictive.
Careful Helvi – your bias is showing.
Snafu with the post this bit dropped off the top
That’s fine as we are all entitled to our opinion. I hold the opposite view, as I believe that the only chance we have is with Rudd. I have said before whether you love him or hate him it seems he is the choice for a large percentage of voters. I actually quite like Julia Gillard myself as well. But what you and I like is immaterial in voterland.
For me it’s not about Gillard or Rudd; for me it is about Labor or Liberal, can’t envisage life under Abbott and co.
Absolutely agree Helvi.
Quite so.
There are those of us on here that do actually support Labor (unlike some of the refugees from Menzies House who contaminate the conversation/discussion when threads strike a political note)
But for any chance at all we have to give the punters a leader that they want which is not Julia Gillard nor someone that outside of NSW they have never heard of.
Does anyone imagine that what we say here matters two hoots in the grand scheme of things?
Just what stunning arguments, killer dialectic, devastating rhetoric are we to produce?
Only fools and horses, goes the phrase.
I am marvellously amused by the antics of poor Unethical 1966, and the playful efforts of its gestalt organism.
It really thinks that what it says is worth a pinch of shit. (Perhaps it is worth half a pinch?)
As for the conservatives, given enough rope they will hang themselves; the trouble is that the aspirational bullshit the voters have been fed for years will possibly cause an Abbott-led government to be elected.
Such is life, perhaps; but I stay optimistic that the use-by dates of the scare campaigns are up and the sensible people on the Liberal benches will sack Abbott, as soon as it is apparent that he will not win in 2013. Esperanto.*
(* one who hopes)
re. Does anyone imagine that what we say here matters two hoots in the grand scheme of things?… hmmm, don’t know what sort of response your going to get on this, but not I, for one.
Wailing and gnashing in the dark, mainly, or as Neil Young once sang, … “[we're] only pissing in the wind”.
True Canguro; though I try to piss downwind.
Listen here you mangled Cat’s Arse!
There was never any expectation FROM ANYBODY HERE that you could produce anything “stunning or devastating”. Many posters have made that clear to you.
Cliche and Ignorance have always been your only contribution.
To suggest, as you do, that our thoughts are worth a pinch of shit is a horrific indictment on your own vapid outlook, and also demonstrates an extremely defeatist, life-denying, attitude that I personally find both sad and repulsive.
Others are here, I presume, to engage in conversation. Through that act we voice our concerns, share our questions and offer tentative ideas to the questions of others. We hope to grow our ideas, to discard old ones, to finesse or abridge, to re-shape existing thoughts/beliefs/bias.
We hope to gain insight from the thoughts of others.
To GROW.
That is the purpose.
If you feel that everything here, our presence and our words, matters for shit then what would be your purpose in remaining here?
Do you believe that all you have spoken, all you have read is shite?
Are your friends aware of your feelings toward their posts?
If one person, just one, leaves this blog with a new idea then it’s worth the effort.
Just one.
But no, according to spittle bubblers like yourself, if one “can’t change the grand scheme of things” then it’s not worth the effort; that anything short of changing the world, RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE, is hardly worth the time of day.
That idea sickens me.
No Quixote,- you trade in a currency no different from the militant crayon chewers over at Catallaxy; never argue a point, bully a counter voice, use slander and fallacy, do whatever it takes to maintain the Hegemony of the Dull.
Well, I say fuck you to such explicit ignorance and cliche!
I’ve said it before to you Quixote, and I’ll say it again – I thoroughly despise your ignorance. I have never seen it so explicitly displayed, in anyone, anytime.
Quite incredible really.
Appalling, even.
Why anyone would bother to converse with a miserable piece of toadslime like you is beyond understanding.
Unhinged 1966 indeed.
I’d prefer to ignore you totally, but you insist on hitting the “reply” button.
Resist the temptation in future, and I might just leave your graffiti alone.
Doug will always look the other way when it counts
Sweet William Soil, very sweet indeed!
Look what other way when what counts? Explain yourself William. I will argue a point with someone prepared to keep a civil tongue in their heads; that certainly does not include this poster in all its multitudinous guises.
As with Peter, it is a waste of time and effort arguing with a troll.
This particular troll seems sane for long periods of time but always reverts eventually. I have an image of it huddled over its keyboard, poised to flurry its fingers into action, powerfully punching the keys as it spits and dribbles vituperation into the mousepad.
You have never argued a point.
Ever.
With anyone.
You will of course refute this.
Please bring examples.
I await.
Eagerly.
But I am resigned to the fact that you shall come empty handed.
PS: To William, don’t confuse the man!
Just pass him a red crayon. He thinks it’s a peppermint!
http://youtu.be/FDhGS4EJS8M
Keeping a red crayon on one’s person is highly under-valued advice, often over-looked and omitted.
Don’t you love that smell of Fedallah in the evening? Smells like…nail polish remover.
ps. For anyone who missed Hendo on Insiders this morning here is a re-cap.
Getting back on track. The Queensland mentality just reared its’ ugly head in the pre selection of Mal Brough.This will give Abbott and his neo cons more clout against the moderated of Mal Turnbull and co. Last I heard Rudd is a Queenslander and they seem to be out for Julia’s blood. Better give them back their golden boy.
Fedallah, in regards to misjudging me, you are going to have to take a number and get in line, and a word of warning the next ticket number if 1027, of if you have some shopping to do or errands to run, it should be off with you.
I try to come to this blog with a little empathy, a little understanding. I have been known to mangle a sentence or two myself, but I understood, I got the gist of what R1 was saying. If I didn’t I would have asked a couple of questions for the sake of clarification.
“History, above all, must be concerned with human life as it has been lived, to the extent that it can be discovered through the filters of the past. You do not have to be a Marxist to appreciate the truth of Eric Hobshawn’s claim that the most widely recognized achievement of radical history “has been to win a place for the history of ordinary people, common men and women”
“That is why , in the last twenty-five years, so much of the vitality of written history has come from the left……reading E.P.Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, which showed me how history might be constructed from below, assembling and making sense of the officially ignored experiences of workers whose stories, in more doctrinaire hands, might have become lost in generalizations about class rather than brought to life in all their particularity”
Robert Hughes The Culture of Complaint.
That book made a big impact on me, and I had it under my belt in a vague memory and that’s why I got R1’s gist even if you didn’t.
R1’s “attempt at garbled uni-speak” is wit and self-deprecation and I like that in anyone, the Harold remark on the other hand was a bridge too fucking far the bitch.
That empathy is what I hope others bring to my posts as it may be the only thing that will make some of the torturous observations I have made comprehensible.
I just dragged down from my bookshelf John Carey’s “The Intellectuals and the Masses” Faber and Faber 1992. You should read it, it’s a tonic. I’m going to read it again myself.
I might even drag out some Studs Terkel as well.
You are so sensitive. I was going for the most unlikely. UNLIKELY. I’ve been accused of being a Liberal poster by Bob before. Sometimes it’s like he doesn’t remember you from one moment to the next. Bananamoron, though, he remembers.
It was a toss up between Harold or Peter Andre. There’s a name for you to google.
Sensitivity is something of which I have never been accused. Ticket 1056 for you R1, it’s was a busy night.
Andre, is that the giant wrestler?
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/news/article_1701510.php/Peter-Andre-s-son-loves-books
What’s all the fuss about, he doesn’t look tall at all, giant, pfft. A body slam from the turnbuckles by this guy is going to be so very disappointing.
He’s not the wrestler. He is a pop singer, discovered by Molly Meldrum initially. He had a very high profile marriage to….
Nevermind.
Allthumbs – No sale. It was a valiant pitch, but no sale.
I think your product overpriced and shoddy.
And here’s why:
(i)I found your reasoning was too erudite, too studied; forced. The obvious pains you went to to rationalise Reader’s confused 2nd year cultural theory shingle speech fallacy, were very obvious; quotes, references, connectors. In fact everything that Reader’s posts did not contain, and everything that would suggest to any but the most casual reader that her posts were a groping, confused, scramble for meaning.
The very fact that you deemed it necessary to flesh out her confused Uni bar blabber; to untangle her mess and successfully attempt the alchemical conversion of confusion to meaning, point to the inescapable fact of its incompleteness; its provisional, confused and indeterminate status as a conduit of meaning.
Which is, as I read it, Untitled’s prime critique.
And which would certainly be mine.
A critique that I know you understand, despite your protests.
That’s one reason I’m not buying.
Here’s the other.
Protecting friends is an extremely honourable and admirable quality. A point not lost, I’m sure, on Untitled in light of his posts on his younger years.
However something more important than that, something absolutely crucial, is the “truth”.
Your friendship with Reader1 is not jeopardised by critique, but in fact strengthened!
Your mistake was thinking that it would be jeopardized; that it would be somehow a betrayal, an undercut, an act of complicity in the service of “goading” or “wedge”.
And that, dear allthumbs, is an error of judgement.
One, certainly not the only one, but one horrific implication of that mistake is visible below in Quixote’s comically absurd “addition” to William’s gag. To wit: do you think that William’s gag “needs” Quixote’s “explanation” – napalm and not nail-polish, morning and not evening?
Quixote has in one swoop sucked all the irony and inversion, all the gaggery and wit out of Soil’s jab.
Now you try explaining that to him (Quixote).
Nicely.
Tell me how you get on.
Cite all the Hughes’, Carey’s, Thompson’s you can get your hands on.
Like ice to Eskimos, they tell me.
And if, by a stroke of some Biblical miracle you are successful, I’ll take 5!!
(ii) We all have numbers and queue’s that lead back to us allthumbs, and if yours sits at only 1027 then I applaud you on having done so well. Mine, I’m afraid to say, is considerably larger. But there is a way, I’ve been told, to shorten the queue.
Speak honestly.
If we are to advance; if we are to maintain the dignity that is rightfully ours, if we are to stand supreme in self worth and in empathy, then we must be frank with ourselves and with our fellow man.
I believe one of your favourites, Nietzsche, had a thing or two to say about that.
Re: other matter,
My copy of Hughes’ “Culture of…” is well thumbed allthumbs.
And yes, I have read Carey’s book. Some time ago now. And it too sits on my bookshelf.
If there is something to be said as to why you choose to recommend it to me as a form of “tonic”, then I would appreciate you coming right out and saying it.
Honest.
Open.
Deliberate and Genuine.
(iii) It’s nearly time to go allthumbs – W+S’s experiment is almost over. I perhaps have lingered longer than I should have, but I was curious. This project was not mine. In fact I argued against it. And now I’m the last one here. Strange how things turn out.
Me spouting crap in a private and intimate tete a tete with allthumbs is not the end of the world. And he did a fine job of tying up any loose ends. As Nietzsche said, truth isn’t dependant on some knob end like you to defend and maintain it. To suggest otherwise is an affront to life itself.
Reader1, This is EXACTLY what I am talking about: you don’t drop a single line of Nietzsche (in this case) and leave it unattended.
There is a responsibility that comes with such matters.
And you eschew that responsibility.
If you had attended Nietzsche 101 you will know that your statement, “truth isn’t dependant[sic] on some knob end like you to defend and maintain it”, contains a veritable library of contradictions, of arguments.
I’m NOT asking for that library.
I’m asking for some inkling, some skerrick, some atomic particle, as evidence that you can carry the weight of the quote.
Anything!
Another line, a link, an indication that you understand, or are even aware of, the complex issues raised by your provisional and incredibly contentious quote.
Anything!!
Address the proviso, suggest options, consider variables, acknowledge variables!!
Anything…
but the bluster of your intellectual insecurity.
You know that I could argue the point; argue it so as to contradict entirely what you take to be his meaning, for example: Truth IS dependent on me because it is MY truth. Truth is a function of MY life, (as it is a function of YOURS) and that truth is an interpretation from my life, not some abstract definition from outside; no “Hudson Godfrean Speaking From Some Privileged God Vacuum” model.
Do you see?
Of course you do.
You have a responsibility.
Do not abrogate it.
Do not stand “fast and loose” like your…
Wait a sec,
Hey Doug!
Doug!!
Take that out of your mouth and put it down mate, it’s not a brown crayon, it’s a dog turd.
What?
Really?
Wow!
OK then.
He says he doesn’t mind.
Anyway, be proud of your knowledge Reader1. These things are not lolly wrappers that you drop in the street, they are the very things that constitute or define a life: be proud of it: defend it, argue it, fight it, struggle with it, add to it.
Honour it.
Test it.
Or at least try.
If you don’t believe in a god, then who is the responsibility to??? There are only the people reading on and unless my words cause catamalysmic destruction among those people, and I did come close with Soil but he came back from it, my responsibility is vastly limited.
Basic, basic philosophical error. Get the god out of there.
“who is the responsibility to?”
No, it’s not God Reader. It’s to living, breathing Man:
it is to the readers of these posts, it is to Nietzsche’s legacy, and it is to those people that live by/define themselves and their outlook by the man’s words.
“….my responsibility is vastly limited.”
No. Your responsibility is not diminished by the number of readers. One reader is sufficient.
“Get the god out of there.”
God is not present in this discussion. If you wish to move the goalposts mid-game have the courtesy to inform me.
Let me refresh your memory: the subject was responsibility to the argument.
If you now wish to discuss God and Nietzsche I am only too happy to oblige.
Pinpoint the exact location of the responsibility.
I have already done that.
Twice.
Perhaps you should re-frame your question.
You, in other words.
Reader1, what do you mean “You” exactly?
I have no question.
I made a statement.
You asked the question that in the interests of clarity I’m now asking you to re-frame.
Why do insist on playing these juvenile games?
Why???
Don’t waste our time.
Say something or,
let it drop.
It’s been a while since we had a good burning. Certain trolls would be useful firestarters on the bonfire of the vanities.
And that is not nail polish remover in the evening, William, but napalm in the morning.
Nielsen poll confirms it.
Rudd or bust for the ALP.
Does the Party Machine not get it yet the Gillard/Swan lies were 1000 times more damaging than the Carbon Tax.
There will be no long road back or slow building of support until they are both gone.
Pride or Party? Ego or selflessness? (not for Rudd of course but for Howse, Short, ROxon, Burke) Australia’s interests vs Personal interests.
The ALP party I know always puts the party and whats best for Australia in front of a PM’s political standing or their own personal hatreds.
Would Gillard listen to a tap on the shoulder from Bob Carr? I hope so.
So Rudd or Bust, which is it to be?
You don’t have someone as leader who is vengeful, treachourous, in Rupert’s pocket and better friends with Julie Bishop than his own team, not to mention all geared up to sack the entire cabinet but for a few simpering wreckages. If Labor goes bust internally, then there is no buffer against the winds of out and out doom. Labor can survive an electoral whitewash, especially if it’s for no good reason and the replacement turns out to be diabolical. This painfully acute and interminable microscope on Labor the singular, abstracted entity is the problem. In real decision making, you are taking on board all the factors and comparing and contrasting them and seeing where they all fit in together.
We know all this and it changes nothing. Rudd is for Rudd but the choice has never been about Rudd vs Shorten vs Combet vs Gillard the choice is about Abbott or Rudd. That’s the choice you have and the choice caucus has. The Public has already picked its winner in Abbott vs Gillard and its Abbott and ten years in opposition for the ALP.
All the other candidates are an even bigger defeat, save their candidature for running as opposition leader if Rudd doesn’t make it over the line vs Abbott.
Well said.
It is utter foolishness to dismiss what the public are saying.
Time and again we are being told this, to the chagrin of much of the caucus and many here.
But as difficult as it is our personal opinions , no matter how compelling, must be put aside and broader opinion allowed its influence.
It is curious isn’t it.
Even the usually fair-minded Michelle Grattan is leaning away from Gillard.
That is not a good sign.
And once again this morning we have voters telling us what many at the ALP top simply do not want to hear.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/voters-prefer-rudd-to-abbott-want-labor-leadership-change-20120729-236k3.html
People will punish if they are not listened to.
ALthumbs(Fedallah)seem to be having a party inside the one head.It is called schizophrenia. These two personalities have inherited the preciousness of Roxen, Crean Swan and Bourke. RUDD OR BUST
Stan Still and Shad – fuck off back to News Limited, you’re as obvious as hell.
No shad, I’m not allthumbs.
I have a straight hair.
He has that slow motion LA 1978 flick thing happening.
Think this:
TCH TCH WE HAVE ANOTHER ONE
The truly impressive thing about the juvenile wrangling, sanctimonious pontifications and comically visceral hatreds exposed on this thread is that they encapsulate the confusion and impotence of the current leadership of the ALP.
Fortunately for the Labor Party, receiving a vicious electoral towelling will give them a chance, (yes, I know, another one), to attempt to rebuild the party and figure out what the purpose of their existence actually is. Apart from a lot of sentimental tripe about ‘the light on the hill’.
There is no purpose beyond workplace rights, social equity, environmental protection, education, healthcare etc, etc. All there is to be gained from peering deep inside of oneself is lint.
You can’t walk down the street without tripping over an astro turfer in these parts.
Jesus Christ, do you really think anyone could be bothered astro-turphing a much shat upon nature strip like this one?
or even astro-turfing it?
So what are you doing here?
R1, I hope Polybius, Stan Still and Shad will stay, otherwise we will end up with only two little nigger boys, instead of ten.Let Bob decide…
Bob is a fictional character to you, despite the veritable torrent of evidence. He’s just there to signify whatever is of passing convenience to you.
R1,mind your your manners as Stan says,didn’t your mum say it too??Maybe not.
R1, get a life and stop fantasizing..
To Reader1, that’s the way!
Turn this into Labor’s Catallaxy!
Let them speak their mind!
You dull Brownshirt bitter bully.
People looking deeply within themselves and “speaking their mind”, bubble on bubble, is just graffiti when divorced from the small detail of who is saying what and why.
“when divorced from the small detail of who is saying what and why.”
- And are you now going to assume the Privileged Position still occupied by HG and determine that “small detail” for others???
Your hypocrisy in this matter is stunning.
Let people speak – their “bubble on bubble” is as privileged as your confessional “[I'm just] spouting crap”.
There is only privelege in relation to something else. Authority does not exist as an independent entity.
I agree with both of your sentences.
Question 1:
You sought to privilege your voice over that of shad’s and Stan’s.
I drew attention to that very relation, and I seek to dissolve it, first by exposure, and second by argument.
And that argument would begin, at the simplest level, with me asking questions of this sort;
What does reader’s “privileging” include?
what does it exclude?
what does it marginalise?
What significations does it foreground?
What does it repress or diminish?
These are standard deconstruction or analytic questions.
And the answers, I imagine, could be found quite easily.
Question 2:
There is no site and no space from which to stand or speak where we are free from history and language.
We are shot through.
Completely.
Even Reason itself, so thoroughly brutalised by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger(to name but a few), is unable to offer itself as refuge let alone a foundation from which to build a new zone of “Authority”.
The notion of “independence” too is a residual fiction; its meaning transformed utterly. No longer do we behold the autonomous object or space or utterance, or declare our exclusion from the world so as to judge it from afar; we now operate in an expansive and flexible field; fluid, contingent and open.
Nothing is “closed” independent now.
Nothing.
It is therefore strange, Reader1, that you say “authority does not exist as an independent authority” yet seek to claim that authority by marginalising Stan and shad.
Now you may argue. As I’m sure you will, that the authority you claim is not in fact independent, but subjective.
That may be true.
However your language and manner thus far, betray you and only serve to sabotage that particular escape route.
No Reader 1, authority does not exist as an independent entity.
Nor should it exist as a subjective entity by which to bully others.
Marginilised who from what?
Reader1, more games huh?
OK then, let’s play:
Marginalised: Yes.
Who: shad and Stan (and others).
From what: From this space/forum.
That doesn’t make any sense on any level. You are a fucking idiot.
I thought Shad was actually trying to marginalize me he called me
Schizophrenic but you let him off, go after Shad.Show him the errors of his ways
God Damn, you two are making me as moist as a snack cake.
You should see the view from here!
What about the economy STUPID
If Rudd rises from the dead maybe Labor will also. Let’s have a go.
People were sick of Howard. It wouldn’t have taken a Rudd to defeat the mealy mouthed cretin. As for that bible clutching, moonfaced, erstwhile witless bureaucrat, picking over his own bitter earwax like so much Soy Braised Duck, I have never heard a Labor leader so efficiently suck the life and meaning out of the English language.
But it is equally clear that Gillard is failing to connect with voters, and there is no store of trust or respect among the electorate for her to draw on. She is a tragic, doomed figure. But replace her with Rudd ? Fuck my eyeballs out with a rubber chicken – there is so much talent on that frontbench, how on earth does this connoisseur of bodily excretion make his way to the top of the Disaster Recovery Plan’s grab bag ?
Ever since Combet’s compassionate and decisive leap to action on Q&A a few weeks back, he has earned himself regular appearances in the masturbatory fantasies of honest men and women across this country, in equal measure to the rise of murderous fantasies involving Sophie Mirabella, Christopher Pyne and large tanks of flesh eating African fish.
If voters feel like you are screwing them, at least bring out the 12 inch dildo – give them something to remember you by. Another feeble fingering by Rudd after an 18 month cold shower is just going to leave them feeling resentful.
Well said pithonme.
Well said indeed!
Combet’s my man.
I shook hands with once in an airport lobby. He chunky minder, all square shoulders and ill-fitting suit, was staring at the menu of a Subway, so I took my chance and said “hey”.
We exchanged 5 sentences before his minder came clunking back.
I liked him very much.
He made an impression.
A killer last sentence
No reader1, I am not a LNP shill.
Mind your manners.
You sound like Tom Cruise. You think shills haven’t heard of deploying petty, self righteous morality as a catch all distraction/attack technique? Shills invented that move.
I interact on this blog the way I would at a dinner party.
I usually prefer to listen rather than speak.
Which on the face of it appears to account for your misconception.
Pithonme, agree with you you, Combet has impressed me too, a man of heart and mind…and so calm.
Whatever the capabilities and talent on the Front bench, it does not necessarily translate to being leadership material personified, in the eyes of the electorate. Rudd was almost like an American President, seen to be over and above the Politics, perhaps his isolation within the Party, both Parliamentary and Organizational, precipitated that approach, but as far as I understand American politics, the President is the uber politician having to negotiate their own personal agenda/legacy through not only their own party but Congress and the Senate as well.
So in the end, does the party need a Political Leader or just a mouthpiece that the electorate feels comfortable with, a puppet, or a team with an agenda? Instead of investing so much in the style and approach of leaders and their electoral appeal, maybe we should go back to basics and start telling the electorate how the whole shebang works, what is needed and how it comes about, to make an idea into a policy and a policy into a piece of legislation. Rip the rose coloured glasses from their faces and show them what being a democracy is all about.
This would force the media to engage seriously with politics instead of the hack approach they take day in and day out, start a different conversation instead of lazy hack approach of the questions of leadership, might make Grattan think beyond the same 250 words she recycles over and over again.
Leo McCary from the Westwing said the last thing the public wants to see are “how sausages and policies are made”. Maybe we should show ourselves exactly how it is done. Gillard can’t do it, it would look self-serving, her supporters can’t do it, it would look desperate, the cross-benches can’t do it, it would look like sucking up. Perhaps Rudd should do it on behalf of the ALP, for the good of the Party. He hasn’t lifted a finger since he lost the last leadership ballot, it would be his pennance to show what a remarkable job Gillard has done. Whether she has or not is neither here nor there.
Sorry about the Roger Voudouris thing.
I figure it’s the reason why you haven’t responded to my “no sale” post above.
There is no emoticon for this.
You can’t tell me that Howard was viewed as leadership material personified in the eyes of the electorate, at least not at first blush. Rudd ingratiated himself into that role of an alternative insipid, non-threatening, managerial type, but that veneer has been well and truly stripped back to the bones.
Rudd’s problem may have been that he was almost Presidential in his style, but his bigger problem now is that he will largely be viewed at best as being barely almost human, and no six million dollar PR campaign will ever recast the Sino sucking little turd as a properly functioning human being worthy of one’s political favour. He cannot be remade, Jim. We do not have the technology. Let him simper and moan on the backbenches like the blouse wearing little drama queen that he is, and get the right bespectacled Labor man into the role this time.
If you want to go back to basics, then Combet is equally the man to take Labor there and bring the electorate along, although I suspect you know that the media will never come along for that ride, nor for that matter, are the punters really all that fussed about the provenance of their BBQ meats.
It was Fedallah’s line actually Helvi.
Howard’s success is a complete mystery to me,I never got it. It’s the punters that need convincing, I was thinking of using Rudd as an electoral tool only. Me I am an Abbott man, I think the PM’ship is a step to far for Tony. I imagine that the Cabinet of his Government turn up 18 months into their first term one morning and find a note from Tony, saying he has finally found his way, as he has returned to the Seminary to finish what he started so many years ago. On reading the note Eric Abetz steps forward discards his clothes to reveal a flanelette Superman costume with a green cape, not having enough red material and takes command.
Combet I hope is the guy.
I ‘discoverd’ Rudd when he was still in Ambassadorial occupations, i thought he was the nice clean-cut boy who spoke Mandarin…
I did not like those appearances in front the church, my enthusiasm waned…
I do not mind Gillard one bit, but if they think a leadership change is needed, I would go for Combet, he’s intelligent, civil, and even looks prime-ministerial, he’s not arrogant either..
I never understood Howard’s popularity.
Combet is very impressive.
But not the man to take over right now I don’t think because Abbott would brutalise him.
Combet would struggle against someone so naturally and skilfully adversarial.
I think anyone will struggle to keep up with a man who has so expertly mastered the thin-lipped shit-eating grin and a penetrating expression at once vacant and truculent, but then Howard never seemed a match for Latham’s aggression, either – he used it against him, ultimately.
However, it has occured to me just now that Greg is a highly unlikely name for a PM. Could be his undoing.
I dunno.
Pick the odd one out:
Ron, George, Bill, Barack.
But there is definitely a superman underneath that Clark Kent.
If you hate Rudd so much ,let him be the fall guy at the next polls and gives Julia an escape route Then we can look at a new leader. What have we got to lose. zilch
It would be crazy to destroy a future leader before this election. Rudd or Julia is the only answer. If we don’t go Rudd you will have him breathing down our throats post poll and the party doesn’t need that instability. Give the guy a second chance. Julia has had her day.
shad, Rudd had his second chance, he did not get the numbers.
The electorate seems to prefer Rudd – although how long this would last after a change of leadership is anyone’s guess.
I agree that it has to be one or the other – at this stage it doesn’t look like anyone else has enough heft to pull the ALP’s fat out of the fire.
Polybius, don’t you think Rudd would need to have a completely different legislative agenda, a completely different policy brief, there’s no use of more of the same under a different leader, do you think he’s got that worked out on the back of a tearful hankie?
Yes, I think he probably would – and I doubt whether he’s given that much thought. And in any case his hankie is by now so blotted that anything scribbled on it must long ago have been rendered illegible.
hat was a joke. He was forced into that and rubbished by the self servers. A second tilt as leader could prove to be one of the party’s smartest moves and Rudd given the chance might very well be a great leader of our time. We can’t lose either way. Only win more votes which is what the game is all about. Check the polls we need swinging voters back from the liberals to get our primary vote back up to give us a fighting chance. Only he can do that. Julia is entrenched on 30%
Pragmatism first Idealism second. If you are not in government your useless. No use waiting for next time because you have principles to uphold because once the trains left the platform there is no catching it as the world is ever changing
It’s 9.30pm.
There will be a short break from what passes as wit by the kiddies. Attention is now transferred to Q&A where great minds are required to compose inane twitter messages in the hope that world will see what an education yet to be completed offers in 140 characters.
To Reader1 – “That doesn’t make any sense on any level.”
Can you really be that thick??
Can anyone???
You asked “marginalised who and from what”.
I answered you.
I think the time has come for you borrow some of Quixote’s crayons. Mind the brown one though. It’s not a crayon. And its been half chewed.
What’s happened to you?
What in God’s name has happened to you???
You were once sharp as a tack, I respected much of what you had to say. But now? Argument without substance, jumbled thoughts, deceit, and an intellectual insecurity that ALWAYS ends with you being abusive.
What’s happened to you???
To allthumbs – if you thought thought “Shad was actually trying to marginalise [you]” then you should go after him. Not me, you.
If you care to, that is.
I had no problem with his comment.
I let those slide.
The ones I don’t let slide are those like Reader’s that come couched as conversations and argument; questions & assertions.
That’s an entirely different kind of thing.
But you know that already.
Then let Shad go after R1. Simple.
Whether shad goes after Reader1 or not is irrelevant.
My only concern is for our conversation; the arguments, the thoughts.
Simple?
Yes, one would think so.
Fedallah, take this from Shad:
“Pragmatism first Idealism second. If you are not in government your useless. No use waiting for next time because you have principles to uphold because once the trains left the platform there is no catching it as the world is ever changing”
I can’t believe you let this go without comment?
Look at the argument, the thought.
When I said “My only concern is for our conversation; the arguments, the thoughts” it was in direct relation to the conversation between Reader and myself; “our” conversation.
I should of made that clearer, perhaps.
Now to this comment you raise regarding shad:
I (reluctantly) agree with his first sentence.
I (totally) agree with his second.
Thus no argument to raise with him.
My time is all over the place (as I’m sure is everyone’s) and I try and snatch it as best I can with the arguments that are MOST important to me.
Questions on Nietzsche, or master/slave, or discursive practice, for example, more important than a backhand comment from shad.
I have seen these political “arguments” ones fizzle out after out after two volleys. They leave me sad and disillusioned; hence my reluctance to engage in any depth.
Yeah, it’s Shad’s last sentence I was keen on getting your opinion on, about it being ok to be unprincipled.
I would like to answer that in this way.
(i) No, it’s not OK.
(ii) “How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so? – Does that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King. Though the ocean, which is inviolate Nature primeval, though this be the element where we move and have our being as sailors, yet as the King’s officers lies our duty in a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that true that, in receiving our commissions, we in the most important regards ceased to be natural free agents. When war is declared are we, the commissioned fighters, previously consulted? We fight at command. If our judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in other particulars. For suppose condemnation to follow these present proceedings. Would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn as it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this: That however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it
…….
To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts. – In war-time at sea a man-of-war’s man strikes his superior in grade, and the blow kills. Apart from its effect, the blow itself is, according to Articles of War, a capital crime. Furthermore -
………
“Aye, sir,” emotionally broke in the officer of marines, “in one sense it was. But surely Budd purposed neither mutiny nor homicide.
…….
“Surely not, my good man. And before a court less arbitrary and more merciful than a martial one that plea would largely extenuate. At the Last Assizes it shall acquit. But how here? We proceed under the law of the Mutiny Act. In feature no child can resemble his father more than that act resembles in spirit the thing from which it derives – War. In His Majesty’s service – in this ship indeed – there are Englishmen forced to fight for the King against their will. Against their conscience, for aught we know. Though as their fellow creatures some of us may appreciate their position, yet as navy officers, what reck we of it? Still less recks the enemy. Our impressed men he would fain cut down in the same swath with our volunteers. As regards the enemy’s naval conscripts, some of whom may even share our own abhorrence of the regicidal French Directory, it is the same on our side. War looks but to the frontage, the appearance. And the Mutiny Act, War’s child, takes after the father. Budd’s intent or nonintent is nothing to the purpose.”
Cheers,
Amanda.x
allthumbs, Shad might not be one to go after anyone…any person.
It’s almost as if you are talking about dogs going after rabbits.
Reader 1 suffers from ancestor worship syndrome. If he thinks his relation to Evatt makes him creditable then he better show some lucid substance or be marginalized forever
Pragmatism vs Idealism, ok Shad I’ll go along with that, although I believe the pragmatic of the left will always be reported as idealism or ideology.
From a policy point of view, which policies of the current ALP do you interpret as pragmatic and as idealistic. Which of either would you dump, in order to win the next election?
We can become our own Focus group.
You are your own focus group!
The fragmentation of the electorate choice goes on.
The pamphlet for this party arrived in my letter box this morning.
Chris, which party do you think is more likely to lose votes to these guys, Rudd or no Rudd?
http://www.populationparty.org.au/Hom
I like a good laugh!
Usual attention to detail I see. The link no work, but I found the POP party.
Go on, which one are you?
Or is there a mole in your focus group.
But why are these guys not in the Greens?
OK, I’ll play your silly game.
They don’t like hair shirts?
Tofu?
Don’t want to be euthanised when they reach 30?
They quite like the lights on?
We’ll just have to wait and see, but you’re on the Rudd to nowhere.
I’ll send you the T-shirt.
Marginalized from whom?
Beasley has just admitted that the annihilation of the party is inevitable and a change in leadership won’t matter. Notwithstanding he dislikes Rudd to no end what a defeatist attitude to have.
I don’t think so.
The Daily Torygraph story sounds like bunkum.
Althumbs If Rudd is returned he can modify the carbon tax and negotiate the refugee situation in a bilateral agreement with Malaysia and Indonesia. Anything else he wishes to introduce being gifted with his insight would be a bonus. This would enforce the expected surge in labors stocks and put much pressure on Abbott’s destructive policies if not on Abbott himself.
Chris I hope you are right but it hit the front page and I am still waiting for a denial. Cowering under the excuse of confidentiality or being taken out of context isn’t a good look
It’s official: The world has gone mad.
It’s only a matter of time until we are subjected to Alan Kohler’s emotional finance report.
This morning on the news it was medal-less. There was body image; too much pressure. Increasingly unbearable palp.
An appearance of a theatre killer; just a sketch this time. Later in the day I woke to see a strange blurred out photo of the killer injected into the broadcast like a splice of porn into a Fight Club reel.
In the next breath is Syria, a brave yet imbecilic reporter scurrying along a bright beige street with camera-man in tow. “Watch out for the snipers you idiot”, I can imagine the 16 year old spit in Arabic, clutching his AK-47. They are shooting the men that look like they know what they are doing. “A commander lies bleeding in the gutter”. I see his bloodied; dead face.
In the next breath there is nothing but Palp.
More speeches but no Charlie Chaplin and everyone afraid.
“No no, its a cochlear implant and the child can hear for the first time…it’s amazing”.
These journalists are like desperate hens scratching at a cricket pitch baked in the sun.
There are carrots on sticks; narrow corridors.
Each dull rusty word dropped is a hook; Tony Greig’s key; a toe to tempt the seagulls.
The snapper parlays on it’s tail; razor teeth shining..
The bowl churns; the current charged; We are the anomalies saying no to poison bait.
In a couple of days,
The Moon will be full the world over.
Wrong tense, Will Soil. The world hasn’t gone mad, au contraire, the world is mad and has been for some time. selves.
Quoted below taken from Ouspensky’s ‘ISOTM’, in response to a question about evolution and the impossibility of escape from our circumstances.
“Yes, that is because people believe in progress and culture,” said G. “There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change. Man remains just the same. ‘Civilized’ and ‘cultured’ people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words. But all these fine words about ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ are merely words.”
This of course produced a particularly deep impression on us, because it was said in 1916, when the latest manifestation of “civilization,” in the form of a war such as the world had not yet seen, was continuing to grow and develop, drawing more and more millions of people into its orbit.
I remembered that a few days before this talk I had seen two enormous lorries on the Liteiny loaded to the height of the first floor of the houses with new unpainted wooden crutches. For some reason I was particularly struck by these lorries. In these mountains of crutches for legs which were not yet torn off there was a particularly cynical mockery of all the things with which people deceive themselves.
Involuntarily I imagined that similar lorries were sure to be going about in Berlin, Paris, London, Vienna, Rome, and Constantinople. And, as a result, all these cities, almost all of which I knew so well and liked just because they were so different and because they supplemented and gave contrast to one another, had now become hostile both to me and to each other and separated by new walls of hatred and crime.
I spoke to our people about these lorry-loads of crutches and of my thoughts about them at a meeting.
“‘What do you expect?” said G. “People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. ‘Progress’ and ‘civilization,’ in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand.”
Wrong tense indeed but the moon IS full.
I am a confessed ignoramus, however I feel at this point confident to assert that my position would involve culture reaching a point in time, where it will assume a theoretical form of enhanced potency. I believe it is already beginning to hit its straps so to speak; producing visible manifestations, ripples, bulges, gaffs; the new fallibility of the old establishment that may or not be, a giant sponge that re-secretes the conquered essence of successive revolutions integrated into the vast flowing opiate.
Transcendence via one hundred thousand million billion trillion tweets, or maybe not.
I am gripped with a sense of urgency to read and read and read; hence, I am less gripped by the need to make like a prophet and more inclined to plug in and let my subconscious do the crunching assumptions; Although Jesus is reckoned to have said that the son of man needs not a pillow and perhaps I would be inclined to agree with him and assume that one foot will continue to follow the other until the sun expands and consumes us all.
Look what do you expect from a bloke trying to write an absurdist journey through space and time with Winston Churchill the Seagull?
Explain to me Wayne Swan and I’ll build you a bridge to Bob Carr. Mind the dead whale though, and the excavator trying to pull it by the tail…*snap*, *wallop*.
I said, ‘mind the whale.’
Yes, the Moon will be full;
And the Sun and the Stars will shine on, blithely indifferent to all our mortal travails.
Good news Steve Bracks thinks we can still win providing we focus and stay on course. I hope the defeatists a la Beasley restrain themselves in the future
U.R.A.LBRL.
Interesting article from another Rudd Hater – Mark Latham.
http://afr.com/p/opinion/revenge_is_killing_labor_0clqlwCI5pMIoXctkufWuJ
I think he underestimates the public in all this. They don’t give a crap who else is ALP leader if its not Rudd they won’t vote for them.
Leaking against Rudd would only happen if he was going to win in a landslide.
Latham ignores that the leaking against Gillard will continue unless a change of leadership and will happen right up to the election.
So again Latham needs to ask Rudd or Abbott? That’s the choice the ALP need to pull their heads out of the sand and their fingers out of where the sun doesn’t shire.
Thanks for the link Cuchulain, I didn’t draw any of the same conclusions you did from Latham’s remarks. What I got, even if Rudd was to get there in the first place and then be elected and beat Abbott, (and even if he just ended up leading the opposition) the white anting would begin straightaway, and the ALP reduced to an internal primal scream therapy session. This would be of no benefit to the electorate at large and further eradicate the support of the party among the electorate even further.
Latham is resigned to a loss and rebuild of the ALP under any leader other than Rudd/Gillard.
Latham hates Rudd more than any other person in the party this is the perspective the article is written from. “Kevi is a c***” is what he wanted to publish in the Daily Telegraph. Rudd coming to power is the worst fate he can imagine.
The chances of not being annihilated under Rudd are high. The chances of winning under Rudd are small. They will be wiped out under any other leader (3-5 Terms out of office). LNP is focused on concentrating money on seats where talented ALP members currently sit (excluding the unwinnable), leaving the Thomson’s (union hacks) of this world in place and losing the Mike Kelly’s and David Bradbury’s.
The only reasonable explanation for the fear of Kevin is that internal polling shows Rudd winning government.
So Shorten etc should move first putting restrictions on a resurgent Rudd including ensuring lack of payback and recriminations (Swan and Gillard to back bench is inevitable). Failure to win means Rudd steps down and supports Shorten as opposition leader.
Latham thinks that the “swearing video” of Rudd damaged his standing in the public eye, much like the strippers it hasn’t, not one jot. The public doesn’t trust Swan or Conroy (especially with NBN debacle) so their vilification in February not damaging at all. Burke’s and Roxon’s may have raised some questions but politics is not known for being a gentle sport.
Remember current polling assumes preference distribution will be as it was after the last election. It will not. It will be a worse 2PP figure for the ALP than the polls currently indicate.
Why are the ALP so focused on losing and rebuilding? Do they not understand all the reforms that they have been put in place will be thrown out and the opportunity to put them in place may never rise again.
Get the f**k over it and grow up, put in place processes to curb the worst of his behaviour. A strong cabinet would be a start, one willing to stand up to the leader, not the pissweak one that let him behave so badly in the first place.
Rudd or Abbott which is your preference?
“Rudd or Abbott which is your preference?”
Hemlock or strychnine?
Arsenic or rat poison?
The poke in the eye with a sharp stick or a blow to the head?
A psychopath or a psychopath?
One is unacceptable and the other is unelectable.
I agree with you concerning the swearing video, that was neither here nor there. Abbott’s popularity is nowhere and yet (if you believe the polls) the LNP will win in a landslide. To me that would be interpreted as who cares about the leaders anyway on either side, the electorate is focused on the policies for good or bad and the economy, and the wish to get away from a hung parliament. In their wisdom, at the moment they look like coming down on the side of the LNP. The electorate always gets the Government it deserves. Rudd or Abbott?, my preference? That is the most depressing choice I have been given of late, apart from a cameo return to Neighbours. It’s like asking Russian Roulette? one bullet or two?
Bravo Cuchulain. The sooner we all get on your boat the one with a Rudder the better. Gillard’s is taking water fast and she is going to take the whole crew down with her Common sense seems to be hard to follow for many but they had better wake before they all become shark bait.
DQ I will go for the electable
Wonderful! Who is it?
Rudd is inevitable now.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/14438455/exclusive-leaked-polling-shows-alp-annihilation/
“The internal Labor polling, leaked to Seven News shows Labor would be left with no seats in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Tasmania or Western Australia.
The secret Government polling shows Labor’s two-party preferred vote in Queensland has collapsed from 45 percent at the 2010 election, to just 36″
Leaking, leaking leaking like a sieve
Has to come from someone in national office, not Rudd
Obliteration or ……… He’s from QLD and he’s here to help
PS Imagine QLD, NT, TAS, and WA with no-one representing their interests in the House or Reps, no one asking the hard questions of Abbott regarding the devastating impacts of the cuts to public spending especially in TAS and NT.
The ALP has to ask would the despair lead to abandonment of the ALP in these jurisdiction? The Left of the ALP switching to Greens (especially in TAS) and the right to KAP (especially in NT & QLD).
Rudd or this? I really can’t believe serious ALP player would consider this devastation an option.
Do they hate Rudd more than they love Australia or what the ALP stands for.
Put a bloody sock in it you stinking Ruddites, I know you scare because you care but please face reality. Rudd is cooked.
And repeat, Rudd is cooked. It is not who but what. Please ask What. Not what-if? One more what-if and I’ll give you What For; ‘In Labor’s Civil War’, a leak is but a by-line, a single mote of salt on a beach of possibilities.
I have no love or affection for Rudd. Though I did not like the way he was disposed of.
The “public” does and that’s all that matters, elections whether we like it or not are popularity contests.
There are some great potential future leaders in the ALP but their time is not now and may be never if these “leaked” polling figures are correct.
I am not looking forward to Gillard doing a Bligh and pleading with the electorate don’t punish us too much in the last week of the election.
If Assad won’t give up his post for the sake of the good of his country, sparing the lives of hundreds of thousands and the risk of possible Armageddon, why would Gillard or Rudd feel inclined to make the sacrifice on the position of Leader?
If either one or both of them wore dark sunglasses and gold braided epaulettes the choice would be easier.
Someone should be looking into Eric Abetz.
Assad won’t give up because he will face a war crimes tribunal if he does. Offer him Asylum and he might change his mind?
PS Shorten must be under stress to be swearing at a pie lady, maybe he is thinking on an important decision – Leader or Treasurer what do I want?
Gillard and Rudd would have to face the Caucus, I’d prefer to take my chances in The Hague anytime. Shorten always looks like he’s short three months sleep. Maybe with the advances in medicine nowadays they could sew Shorten and Combet together, or share the PM’ship on a rotational basis like the stewardship of the European Union. I want to see some innovation!
POT KETTLE BLACK?
Rudd saved his abuse for members of cabinet, caucus, public servants and defense force personnel.
Current Minister saves his abuse for other peoples work places over imagined pot-shots at Gillard (highly strung at the moment perhaps).
Throwing and hitting staff with ashtrays?
Breaking Taxi drivers arms?.
Crazy isn’t it, our best and brighest and grumpiest.
Who among us hasn’t abused an Asian milkbar owner with broken English when trying to retrieve hot pastries for your hungry sports playing children locked in the double parked car while you run in to find them something hot to eat after a(nother) day of stress inducing back stabbing by your work colleagues and unceasing media speculation that your livelihood is about to be ground to dust ?
This shut-your-pie-hole gate beatup won’t cut it with the average non-Asian milkbar owning voter or family members.
We’ve all been there. We are Bill Shorten.
Bit of a bleak picture, if we’re all Bill Shorten. Bell-curve fringe dwellers hopefully escape that particular fate.
But if the cap fits…
Let the Rudd tsunami begin.
People don’t regard Rudd as your usual politician. That is why they like him. They are put off with most from both parties. The obvious thing to do is swallow hard and do it. NOW!!!!
They have short memories. Think “goldfish”. Two weeks back in, they’d all remember why they were glad to see the back of him.
By ‘they’ you mean whom?
Me? Yourself? A memory system that functions like a goldfish?
C’mon Doug, this is a sweeping generalisation which is inaccurate and a lazy expression.
Read the comment I am replying to, Canguro.
Metamorphosis, a parable of our times:
“Kevin spent the days and nights almost entirely without sleep. Sometimes he toyed with the idea that next time the door was opened he would take the family’s affairs in hand again, just as he had done in the old days; once more, after a long interval, there appeared in his thoughts the figures of the head of his firm and the chief clerk, the salesmen and the apprentices, the exceptionally dense errand boy, two or three friends from other firms, a chambermaid in one of the provincial hotels – a sweet and fleeting memory -, a cashier in a hat shop, whose affections he had earnestly but too leisurely courted-they all appeared to him, mixed up with strangers or people he had already forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family they were all of them unapproachable, and he was glad when they vanished. Then at other times he was in no mood at all to worry about his family, he was merely filled with rage at how badly he was being looked after, and although he couldn’t even imagine anything that night tempt his appetite, he would still make plans for getting access to the larder and helping himself to what was after all his ration, even if he wasn’t hungry”.
With thanks and apologies to Franz Kafka and Gregor Samsa.
Kevin whittled the days and nights into misshapen skerricks devoid of enough matter to provide a base for meaning to manifest itself in any kind of reasonable manner, unless perhaps swept up and displayed in unison(Simultaneously, like a collection of soap shavings, crammed together in the name of recycling and collection). Often and almost entirely he survived without sleeping. Competently toying with the idea of the door opening and closing as a dice-like reality-altering device for deciding the fates of former Prime Ministers, like a metronome at a tennis match, from power to nothing, nothing to power, he clicked on and off, back and forth, alive and dead; seven to nine, nine to seven. Once more, after a long interval, there appeared in his thoughts the figures of the head of his firm and the chief clerk; gargoyles, the floggers and the mimes, the assiduously dense errand boy, two or three friends from other firms, a chambermaid in one of the provincial hotels – a tangy and chewed memory – a cashier in a hat shop, whose affections he had earnestly but too leisurely courted- they all appeared to him as a mixed sachet of barber shop trimmings; convoluted with pathogens or faces already lost, but instead of assistance, he and his family resolved that all of them were unapproachable, and he was glad when they were not where he left them, upon another imminent return. Then at other times he was in no mood at all to worry about his family, he was confined to suppressing his hurt: the unnatural and unjust treatment that he had met at the hands of all of them. Although he couldn’t possibly imagine anything that night to tempt his appetite, he would still make plans for getting access to the larder and helping himself to what was after all his ration, even if he wasn’t hungry. ‘Fuck the losers’, he said to himself and went back to playing ‘the hokey pokey’ on his Wii-Fit.
“2mrw & 2mrw & 2mrw crEpz n dis pety plAs frm dA 2 dA 2 d lst silabl of rcrdd tIm & al our ystdAz hv lItd f%lz d way 2 dsty def…tis a tAl tld by an ejit, ful of snd & fury sgnfyn nutin.”
Macbeth, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow etc etc”
Oh, WELLL, apologies to Mr. C.Rudd.
I did not understand everything you were on about dear allthumbs, but I very much enjoyed reading it and to say thank you for the referral to an author whom I had never heard of, I thought I would embellish your work with further metaphor. I hope that I did not skew any of the original meaning but if I did, think of this (please you as well Mr. Rudd, dear future ant overlord) as merely an exercise.
Things are getting a bit Phil. K. Dicky round ere’.
There was a time William when I actually believed one may wake up one day and find oneself has turned into a giant beetle. I have never quite been able to rid myself of that thought. I was thinking that last night while singing to the cicadas, I thought I would give them the night off and repay a little of my debt. Must go, my dung cakes await. Joseph K is coming for Tea.
I changed the name Gregor to Kevin, the rest is a direct quote from Franz’s Metamorphosis. Enjoyed your riffing though.
I got as far as ‘CONVERSATION WITH
THE WORSHIPER’.
Can anyone imagine the field-day Abbott and the rag-tag collection pretending to be an alternative government would have with a Rudd return?
There is enough material there to fill hours of current affairs shows, weeks of shock jock scripts and myriad newspaper columns like nothing we have ever seen.
Popular Kevin? Within 2 weeks the voting public would remember, without being reminded, just why he’d been removed and just why this is such a bad, bad idea.
Dear DQ,
I am writing today pleading with you to release the details that only you seem privy too viz;just why he’d been removed and just why this is such a bad, bad idea.
It is of vital importance that you do this and verify your sources so that the 62% and counting of the useless voters can see the folly of their ways in preferring K Rudd to just about anybody of the current weird mob.
Ta.
Chris.
They may be able to do it, if they ditched the name of the ALP, strip it like a shell company and start up under another name, write off the bad debt and all the outstandings to the ALP and begin with the Australian Social Democratic Party (no ASDAP too many bad associations with that one), but you know what I mean) They leave all their old personalities behind, like old suits and begin again.
Red Rose, Third Way, new product launch, Murdoch would love it.
Public knowledge, Chris; it has all been aired in February, by about six or seven senior ministers. The material is breathtaking.
It is a bad, bad idea because the goldfish will be reminded just how pathetic Kevin was when Abbott got to him in the six months from November 2009 to June 2010.
Abbott was a missile aimed at Rudd; the leadership change in June 2010 saved Labor from an embarrassing loss after just one term.
Gillard can still emerge triumphant if the nervous nellies can hold their nerve. The coalition scare campaigns have reached their use-by dates and Abbott will now need to put up or shut up.
I’m sorry Doug, there isn’t much at all in your response to Chris that rises above media platitudes.
Everyone thought Rudd was fantastic until we were told he wasn’t by the very people who told us he was fantastic to begin with!
Although I like Gillard very much and hope she stays on to win the next election, it’s difficult to swallow this anti-Rudd invective. As I’ve mentioned before I think the moment for Rudd has not only passed but that he can never come back and hold onto his front bench, or back bench for that matter.
I am certainly not defending him but neither shall I be convinced by your (and many, many others) post event psychoanalysis or “we knew all along” line, that to be totally honest, borders on the laughable and the cliche.
“Abbott got to him”.
Really?
“saved Labor from an embarrassing loss after just one term.”
Really?
“The coalition scare campaigns have reached their use-by dates and Abbott will now need to put up or shut up.”
Really?
I’ve heard these lines ad nauseam over the past 6 months.
As a Labor supporter I’m getting very tired of hearing them.
But it is the total honest truth!
Rudd was always a control freak, invasive into every portfolio; even his supporters, such as Lindsay Tanner, described him half-humorously as the headmaster.
A control freak who insisted on “my way or the highway” to his senior ministers and lost so many of his own staffers as to be embarrassing.
The only supporters he still had in late 2009 was Newspoll – and when that fell in 2010 the Labor caucus saw their chance to be rid of him. They pounced, and dragooned Gillard in to take over. She should have made it seem that she was more reluctant, but her political judgement was then rather lacking.
My point is that it takes time to make a Prime Minister, and Julia has now done the hard yards mastered her brief and is a good Prime Minister.
The voting public will catch up. In time, I hope.
Sorry Doug, more platitudes and post hoc are not going to convince me of anything.
I feel that the kind of rationalising you are engaged in only serves to make the situation more volatile and untenable; where the Gillard vs Rudd battle is simply doing the job of the Coalition.
That’s the real issue here I feel.
Stop sitting back waiting to be convinced, you lazy sod. It’s a terrible attitude. You are not the archetypal audience. No one has a duty to you.
I am convinced in my own mind as to what the course of action should be. I’m certainly not waiting on the thoughts of other Labor supporters such as Doug and shad to “convince” me of anything. The argument I’m making is that both of them are the source of the problem.
On another post Untitled, 66 suggested that you should read and think more carefully – I agree with that suggestion.
To differ with you on 2 other points:
I do represent an archetypal audience – even as a committed Labor supporter I represent a huge swathe of the Australian electorate’s philosophy/ideology/belief system.
“People” do have a duty to me.
My politicians have a duty to conceive and communicate a position, and their advocates (such as shad, Doug or Bananaman) have a duty to argue the case without recourse to media cliche or simplistic mantra’s.
That’s if they want to be seen as credible.
Reader 1, you strike me as a confrontational woman; that’s the second time you’ve responded to me with a negative thrust. If you have something to say that’s interesting or germane then say it without using the knife.
Could you do that?
Doug is not the problem. Doug has no duty to you. Untitled is a psychopath who has told me on numerous occasions that they are glad my dog is dead. They also hounded and abused me on this site during my dog’s last days and for months leading up to it. Never making an argument, just “critiquing” individual people on a private blog site who have views that correlate with the propriotor, views that have been made blatantly explicit over decades. If you have evidence or a new angle, put it forward. Otherwise your opinion is just one more droplet in the endless river that leads into the ocean.
Anyway, I suspect you are IPA. You people don’t fool me.
No flies on you, Reader1
Jeeeezus!!
Turn your back for a minute and she’s back on!
Ok then, let’s do another round:
Reader1: “Untitled is a psychopath”
Untitled, 1966: I’m glad your dog is dead.
We can do this all day if you want.
The Cat/Untitled (out of nowhere) – I’m glad your dog is dead/dying, etc. etc. and much worse beside.
Reader 1 – (after months of close observation and initial support) this person is off their trolley and not in a good way. The only solution is to be aware because this isn’t a normal person in the sense that is experienced in the majority of cases.
B. Ellis (repeatedly) – please go, please leave, you are deeply ugly.
The Cat/Untitled – begins process again
Silly me!
Now you have explained it I realise that the silly 62%+ haven’t got a clue.
Just as well we can rely on you to make us see the error of our ways.
And I didn’t know that Feeney, Farrell (no I’d never heard of him before either)Paul Howes et al were in the cabinet.
So there you go.
So is it Feeney for PM? Or Howes when he rolls a sitting member for pre selection of a ‘safe’ seat(oxymoron?)
Or shall we get really serious and parachute Karl Bitar or Simon Sheikh?
Bitar for PM has a nice ring to it doesn’t it.
That should save us.
I am trying to disagree amicably, Chris – don’t make it personal.
You might notice with the polls that Rudd is preferred PM by the coalition supporters -the coalition supporters – and not by the Labor supporters.
DQ to paraphrase;
“The DQ doth protest too much, methinks.”
Nothing personal in it.
What ever spin the undeniable fact shows in the polls a vast majority of voters prefer Rudd over, Julia Gillard.
And Rudd over Abbott.
DQ Even Howard said Rudd would have won the election outright. As for Abbott and company I think their negativity (as they say) is wearing thin with the public so any rubbishing and rehashing of the past I predict will have little effect with the resurgent polls once Rudd is returned to his rightful place(in the people’s minds). The electorate will be sighing much relief that they have an alternative to the Abbott madness that would have to be endured for the next three years.
shad, I’m struggling to understand something about your position. Perhaps you can clarify it for me.
How on earth will Rudd manage not just the mammoth and absurd task of reconciling his publically hostile caucas but the Sisyphean task (hello all-thumbs) of convincing the electorate that all is well in the Labor ranks?
I see it simply as an impossibility. Both issues, I mean.
Let Gillard move forward to the election without this incessant Rudd white-anting from his supporters like yourself, and without the Gillard camp’s (Doug’s) laughable “we knew all along that he was evil” amateur pychologising.
The intentions of both of you may be positive but from where I’m standing, as a Labor supporter of 25 years, it looks just silly and embarrassing.
Imagine what it looks like to the Coalition supporters?
Good on ya Annabell, stop Rudd adulation/bashing, stop talking about other choices for the leader, unite behind Gillard, confidently..
Thanks Helvi.
I have this fear that it will all end badly.
It’s looking that way I feel.
In hindsight all of this could have been avoided if the ‘fiddlers’ had shown some discipline and gotten behind Rudd in the same way you suggest for Gillard.
Overhaul desperately needed in the organisation a la the NZ model I have mentioned before which would ditch factional doings, requiring a change of leader during a term as requiring 70% of the vote:caucus 40%, membership 40% and affiliates which are more than just unions, 20%.
Provision in there of course for changes if some other serious event, illness etc occurred.
And Helvi, even if by some magic zapped all of us and we united ‘confidently’ behind J.G. you need to explain your plan for convincing the hoi polloi.
Chris, Liberals stood by Howard, now they seem to be united behind Abbott, none of them ideal leaders. They attack the Labor and don’t talk about their own misdemeanors. Labor politicians bicker amongst themselves and let the Opposition off too lightly. What I’m trying to say: stay united behind the one you have chosen, be it Rudd, Gillard, Combet…
Excellent first two paragraphs Chris.
Sign me up.
As if Howard knew anything about anything! And even if he did, he preferred always to sow dissension.
He is in the same bed as Abbott – a bed he never could lie straight in.
DQ Many of those coalition supporters left Labor when they rolled Rudd. To retain government we need them back
Doth protest too much? Doth I really?
Some here want Rudd back. And I tell you truly that it would split the Party.
No protest is too much to head that off. Forget Rudd. Solidarity, comrades.
You ‘doth’ if you think it was personal from my part.
Solidarity is a lonely word when the comrades find themselves ruled by the faceless few.
Everywhere, right down to the Conference what the comrades want the comrades don’t get unless it coincides with the requirements of the invisible.
Judging by the way the party is moulting members like an infested dog, solidarity is a big ask.
As to a split it could apply Vicky Vercoe as well if Rudd doesn’t get the gig.
Without Rudd our rotting carcases will swing in the breeze thanks to all those swinging voters
Who will swing?
Yes.
Confucius: Talk doesn’t cook pies (nor do mogwai).
To Reader 1, from our quickly abbreviating conversational space above.
In the context of this Gillard/Rudd dispute I believe that the views of Doug, shad and bananaman are the problem. Their partisan positions overlook the complexity of the issue and the very real aggravations they cause to the debate.
I have little interest in your relationship with Untitled,1966. I was using his or her line to suggest that judging by your reply to me I thought you had not given my posts proper consideration.
It does not help your cause either to suggest that Untitled, 1966 was the only one partaking in “hounding and abuse”. I have read plenty from a range of people – yourself included.
It’s not the “droplets” that I mind, it’s the poison that they can often contain.
I also love your final 2 sentences
It reminds me of what my Dad says – no-one can damage you to the degree that you can damage yourself.
Thanks for that Annabell.
I appreciate it.
You’re welcome Untitled.
Dear Annabell, though your heart may be in the right place, you really do seem to have a rather thin understanding of just what is at stake here, and an even thinner appreciation of the characters present on this blog if you lump me in with those others.
Reader1 is quite accurate in her appreciation of the position, and you regrettably are not.
Don’t patronise me!
I have a very adequate understanding of what’s at stake here.
I doubt very much that you do – otherwise you would resist the urge to default to cliche.
In this case I was being very specific – you and shad are identical fodder for the Gillard/Rudd camps respectively. Now in and of itself that is not a problem – what is the problem is shad’s “white-anting” of Rudd and your embarrassing amateur psychoanalysis of Rudd, post hoc I might add.
That is the problem in the Labor camp as I see it.
As far as the fortunes of Labor are concerned, which was the topic under discussion, that is the issue at stake here, thank you very much!
I lumped you in with the others to draw the comparison with shad as Labor supporters, and I drew the comparison with Bananaman because you and he are two sides of the same coin.
If you can’t see that then you are no help to the Labor side. Do you really believe that the internal squabbling symbolised by shad and yourself is helping anything? Do you?
Also, and very importantly, do not assume that because I’ve only been writing for a few weeks that I don’t know about the characters on this blog. That is an incorrect assumption.
Reader 1 thought that she would come into my response to you with a nasty little slap; that is evidence enough to me that not only can she not appreciate any situation but that the enemies she has formed here may be justified in their dislike of her.
Do not patronise me again Doug.
To Annabell : “Post hoc” my arse. Rudd was always a disaster waiting to happen, and I have consistently said so from my first blog comments, in about May 2010. And privately, before that.
But so what? Blind Freddy, and you as well, can see that Rudd is poison.
Patronise you? Perish the thought! Only if you deserve it, and only if you are less than civil to me.
I don’t suffer fools gladly.
Doug, the reason for my skepticism is that I know of no-one who thought Rudd, to use your term, a “psychopath” before his ousting. Or should I say before the reasons and rationalising started as to why he was removed.
As a committed volunteer worker for my local member I can tell you that no-one had thought his style “psychopathic” or outside any prescribed norms; not our member, the respective secretaries or other workers and volunteers.
You are first person, outside the caucus, to say they knew before.
I must congratulate you on your clairvoyance.
But don’t be surprised at my skepticism and cynicism.
To return to my point – I believe that the supporters of Rudd and Gillard need to shut up and batten down the hatches.
I also believe that the “advice” from Coalition supporters lie Bananaman and F.I.Kendall(?) needs to be heard.
Thanks Annabell.
Didn’t Rudd’s “mood swings” between serious GFC crisis-mode and happily going on comedy shows such as Rove and Good news Week sound any alarms for you? Were you honestly surprised the night/morning he was dumped?
When Turnbull unfortunately failed his constituency (conservatives) by being no Opposition at all to the (then) worst PM of all time, conservative-voters certainly publicly let him know… this gave Abbott the guts and motivation to challenge for the leadership.
Turnbull ticked all the boxes – mature, successful, articulate, pleasant, sophisticated, NOT chasing a super package… but failed to take the game up to Rudd – and had no chance of winning an election, sadly.
ALP voters should be furious at the unfolding disaster.
Even as a conservative I wished Gillard well for the task – an expectation of running the country for our benefit. Sadly promoted well beyond her capabilities as it turns out. What were they thinking? They need to start from scratch and try and run a fish and chip shop. Don’t get me started on the number of PMO “advisers”… either they are giving bad advice – sack them. Or giving good advice and being ignored – sack them.
Hi Bananaman, in all honesty I would have to say no, I did not see it coming and nor did I see evidence of erratic behaviour that was an inevitable precursor leading to Rudd’s assassination. Now before you call me naive let me say in my defense that obviously whilst not privy to the machinations at those higher reaches,or even the medium reaches, there were none of us working on the ground level that thought the coup was about to happen. Don’t get me wrong, we had all heard the rumblings, we all read the papers and the blogs but it was a far cry from the actual reality of it on june 23. I don’t care what people might say now, but at the time we all stood around dumbfounded, every single one of us.
I think proof of that can be found in the media reports and conversations at the time.
If I could call to the witness stand those on your side, those who were doing everything in their power to foment agitation, I think you’ll find even they were surprised at the outcome of that night.
Personally my initial fears arose when the ETS was tossed off the agenda.
I thought it was a mistake and a politically dangerous move. But did I think it would lead to Rudd”s demise? No way.
The reason I have little time for Monday morning experts like Doug, (no offense Doug) or revisionists like shad, (no offense shad) is that their posturing is causing tremendous harm to the party.
The only people happy to see this play out for as long as possible are the Coalition.
And who could blame them?
I know plenty of old Sydney blue bloods Bananaman and let me tell you why they didn’t like Turnbull – they said he was too modern for them; too dashing, an adventurer, a new breed. It most certainly was not because he failed to take the game to Rudd, it was because he wasn’t “one of them”.
Turnbull will have to wait for this 65+ generation to die before he will ever lead the Coalition.
It could be a long wait.
Thanks again Annabell.
I’m a bit surprised that Rudd’s poor performance leading to his sacking wasn’t noticeable to you, despite the rumblings.
You never noticed what a chameleon he was even before the 2007 election? A proud church-going ejected stripjoint patron – a man for all people. A lot was overlooked in the enthusiasm to get rid of Howard, especially among the media. No matter.
It’s reported that Julia Gillard was one among Swan and Tanner that convinced Rudd to dump his ETS due to the emerging consensus that it would be electoral suicide (irony eh – to later secure power she had to commit to Co2 Tax/ETS).
That dumping the ETS was one of the reasons given for dumping Rudd is an attempt at diversion from the fact he was so woeful (later clearly described by a number of his colleagues). Rudd himself has taken up this diversionary tactic about dumping his ETS. It was a point of difference that got him elected and quickly became the millstone that crushed his bloodless arse regardless.
The bluebloods you speak of probably are being honest – but truly winning (and the ability to win) is what really counts. Abbott has no shortage of faults that will be overlooked for the same reasons.
Turnbull will be long forgotten, and we will become a Republic – but without his butterfingers. He’ll return to making mucho dinero and put it all behind him.
Reader1: I would like to say that I am really sorry that your dog died.
A comment that someone is pleased about this would seem the product of a poisoned, poisonous mind.
I said it F.I.
It was me.
And I would say it again.
If you wish to why or for what purpose, just ask.
Are you glad about the fact he suffered pain too? Does that float your boat?
Ahh, sorry for your loss R1. A wonderful dog once owned me, then was struck by a heart tumour.
There is a lot of assertion on this thread, and little discussion.
Don Watson writes of the power of the politician’s gestures, rather than words. He cites JH’s approval rating going up after he visited Bali, because he was seen to hug people and share their grief, and said almost nothing.
So far the ALP images are Kev’s earwax, Julia’s flight from the Aboriginal embassy, and now we have Shorten abusing small Asian shopkeepers. Don’t these people have media advisors who could come up with better photo/publicity ops than these?
FI Kendall, R1 tells Chris and shad that they are stupid and /or paid by Liberals, she tells Annabell is a lazy shod,Untitled is unhinged…
How can you think that is conducive to any discussion, people rather leave than be abused.
I lost my Border Collie to a fox bait, I went to a dear friend’s funeral in Brisbane on Friday. These are my private sorrows, not for anyone on public forums to be concerned about.
Irrespective,I am still sorry for R1 that her dog died.
Did you mean to criticise her mother, in that comment about her manners, Helvi? I thought that that was a step too far.
My mum taught me good manners, but now that I’m a big girl it is entirely up to me to use them, blaming anyone ,parents or circumstances is not a good look; friends or dogs dying is no reason to behave badly…
That was very well said Helvi.
It’s nice to bring up a terribly sad subject out of context and dangle it in a person’s face in triumph? Someone who has claimed to have met me, claims to know what allthumbs looks like, claimed to know Doug’s address and licence plate number and threatened him with harm, and claimed to be both a Gillard staffer and a nursing home employee.
Someone who always works according to a particular method if you can spot the clues. Appears within days of the previous incarnation’s departure, claiming to be both a newcomer to the site and in full knowledge possession of the intimate details and characters of specific others. Entering from the outset already in a state of assumed omnipotent moral superiority. So omnipotent in fact that no explanation for the omnipotence is necessary, it bursts out of nowhere and just is. Eerily similar to what has been happening here in fact.
Here we go again, you fucking demented bitch!
No, Annabella’s not me.
I’m not even the guy you thought I was when I first appeared!!!!
But that never stopped you and that maggot ass licker Quixote, now did it?
You are a mere shell.
Fucking sad.
Thankyou for your compassion.
???
I had to read U66′s post below to make any sense of yours.
Don’t waste my time or yours with line Reader 1.
Reader1, you are wrong.
Both of your paragraphs are incorrect in substance.
I know that to be true because the person you speak of will be sitting 10 feet from me in about 2 hrs time.
Do you understand that?
Do you understand what I’m saying to you?
Annabel–Sorry we are aggravating the complexity of the situation with our simple partisan view. It would be nice to know what your contribution can do to solve our dilemma. I think I speak with the support of the majority of the uncomplicated (simple) who will decide the outcome. Hop aboard or continue to cloak yourself in the fantasy of complexity. Sometimes solutions stare you straight in the face and one is able to see the forest.
Shad – it is my contention that your advocacy of Rudd as alternate PM will rip the heart out of the Labor party and utterly decimate its chances next year.
I don’t say your grievance is unjustified, not at all, I personally liked Rudd very much – I voted for Labor and saw Rudd as a white knight.
However, what’s done is done and the time for autopsy’s or redress is over.
Do you honestly think this is a simple matter? Well please address the questions I set earlier –
how do you propose to reconcile Rudd with most of the front/back bench to ensure a solid unified attack on the Coalition?
how do you propose to convince the electorate of the veracity and sincerity of that “reconciliation”?
If you can see the forest from behind those trees shad you have much better eyesight that me.
But I will listen to your answers to my questions or any other arguments/suggestions you or the Rudd camp has.
What I’m trying to say can be condensed into one simpe statement: everyone needs to stand behind Labor – all the Gillardists and Ruddites – so as to insure a Labor victory next year.
If we lose, and all indications are it will be a thumping – then you and Doug can argue about it for at least 2 terms.
Again Annabell, well said, you are putting in words what I’m thinking.
For me too Rudd was the white knight but I realised only too soon he wasn’t the right one.
Mungo McCallum, Manne,and others who I thought were Labor supporters have been undermining Gillard.
Also we stare too much at the polls and become despondent instead of just getting on with the policies…
I would never slap you Annabel or Reader at least not on the face. Naughty girls! Sorry couldn’t resist
You girls certainly support Gillard no end. I wonder what proportion of the 29% primary remaining are female.
The rudd redux blog has broken all records on tabletalk one would think which confirms that the elephant in the national psyche won’t go away
I feel you have confirmed my opinions shad.
You have responded twice since I set you the questions and twice you have seen fit to side step them.
As I said before I fear that your “hop on board” is taking us all on some trainwreck.
That isn’t an elephant in the psyche, it’s simply a composite of 6 or 7 separate conversations and the fact that Mr Ellis is away.
Who taught you what is no doubt of interest to someone, Helvi, but that wasn’t the question I asked you.
I do wish that you could stop yourself from constantly carping at or about R1. As I understand it, you are not a big girl, but an older woman: it would be nice to see some kindness towards a younger woman’s sorrow.
And, of course emotions affect most people’s behaviour. Not yours?
F.I.Kendall, you are baiting Helvi.
I ask you, as a complete stranger, to stop it.
As I understand it you also are an “older woman” and it would be lovely to see you display some kindness, not just toward a peer, but also toward another human being.
Annabell,it’s pointless talking to FI Kendall about Reader1′s bad behaviour…FI Kendall is R1′s other pseudonym at the moment, as you might have gathered…
I future I’ll only comment on Bob’s movie articles, as they don’t seem to interest R1/FI Kendall…
I am not Felicity Kendall, although I think she is great. I even harbour a secret hope that she is iorurua, who was also great and who you and your mate also crapped on.
No, it’s time for the big reveal.
I am Soil. Soil is me. Same being, two different physical dimensions.
Why do you feel compelled to post under a series of different identities?
What’s the payoff?
Is it a corollary of the human condition, the lack of a central “I”, and its obverse, the condition of having many “I’s”?
I don’t find much to celebrate in that particular reality, au contraire, knowledge of the condition contributes to a sense of subjective malaise, not that you’d need to know.
I am not Soil. Obviously. In this world, if you occupy a different physical dimension, that pretty much makes you a different person. I have only ever posted under one name here and on The Drum. I have never, ever used another name. Not once. Helvi has in the past admitted to doing so but she said at the time it was under some kind of duress. She knows full well F.I. Kendall and I are not one and the same. I long ago ceased to wonder at Helvi’s motivation. It’s not for me to know. I have nil respect for it however and find it bloody annoying.
What is this?
Method Actors ‘R’ Us?
To the crow; I was a tall and cloaked bobbing vessel, crossing a polished obsidian lake to a suspended silver rock; its planarised face, a blending multiplicity of azure blues.
I do not give two hoots what form I take to gumbie cats for whom I begrudgingly act the doorman, masseuse and can opener.
There were only two beers left in the fridge; it was a shame and a pity.
Quoth the seagull, ‘Winston Churchill.’
And so it goes.
Just two beers, quoth he.
Coopers, perchance? One must exercise judgement in these important matters.
Alas, the ‘International Flavour Pack’ was nowhere to be seen.
William Foil ay.
I am not Soil and apologise for any misconceptions caused. I was using Soil as a foil. A foil, a masseuse and a can opener but he practically begs for it.
I once knew a lawyer and her housemate, a gay nurse, who both fitted those criteria, begging for it, and uncomfortably so at the time, given my unblemished status.
You should have gone for it. Missed opportunity.
I would advise the viewing of ‘catfish’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1584016/ . It is sold as a documentary, but is perhaps some kind of fiction; though worth watching. The antagonist of the story has many I’s and can only be a monster of depravity until you get a real glimpse into the reality at the other end of the social media.
Where is the bait, Annabel? I would call this a response to her post, that’s all.
Btw: I have enjoyed your posts, and agreed with you. A united front would seem to be essential, but from what is written here, evidently unattainable.
Hi F.I., to me it read as a provocation. If it wasn’t then I apologise. If it was, then I’m glad its stopped.
It certainly seems unattainable.
You are a Coalition supporter aren’t you F.I.?
What are your thoughts on this in-fighting?
It is up to the caucus to show a unified mature support for Rudd and for Rudd to also be collabrative in presenting a unified party. The trouble with some, they think hatred is something everlasting and particularly omnipresent within the party. I think they all have a unified purpose in espousing and implementing true labor policies for the betterment of our wonderful country. A public cleansing is much better than what has been going on. Human nature is to forgive
It must be Sunday
Not really much of an argument is it shad?
I wonder how the electorate will take it?
I’ve got a pretty good idea.
Why return to the chief architect of their destruction? Starting afresh would be the only sensible option. Or Crean.
Crean? CREAN? Why not just bypass the election and give the keys to The Lodge straight to Wyatt Roy?
I’m just suggesting a way the ALP can lose with a little bit of honour.
I’m considering giving your guys my vote for the first time in my life, just to make sure you get over the line with the most comfortable majority possible. I want all the ducks lined up with wall to wall conservative state governments, I want it to be a Tory Swingers party where you don’t even have to drop your car keys in a bowl, because you all came in the same bus.
The electorate should get what they vote for, in spades. Fuck’em.
If the ALP were crazy enough to draft Rudd back as PM (they’re not), the “psychopath” et al personality readings from his colleagues circa February will be on high rotation.
If you wondered if this government could not become any greater a laughing stock, resurrecting Rudd will remove all doubt.
Shorten could ease the pain next week, take the reins, admit they will be in for some severe punishment come next election, work hard and honestly to rebuild his party and it’s structure, grow some respect by exercising commitment and integrity for the good of the country, and make the ALP a viable political party once again. Two or three terms of which could be seen as an investment. Or be out of government for as long as it takes the Coalition to retire the debt that the ALP are so good at leaving behind.
But never take the advice of an (political) enemy!
Don’t bother yourself Bananaman.
No one is listening; they’re too busy playing at Days of our Lives.
Good post though.
It’s too early for Shorten or Combet. You boys have it for two terms then it’s ours again.
And so it goes.
Keep writing though. I hate your politics but love your tenacity!
As sure as Assad’s fate so is Gillards. She and Tim should take an extended leave of absence and let the party begin– its’ rejuvenation
Here lies another box for nature,
Carbon ready;
Black to eyes down here,
Where death is at its job.
Up there you’ll hear a rhythmic sob
Or two from living yet-to-dies –
A humming lacrimoso –
It all but cleans the eyes:
Forget it –
The dismal show of grief –
Life is only chemistry –
Our stay is only brief.
It’s we who hype it up!
Diaphragms jerk again;
The jet monotone of hearses
Feeds the disingenuousness
Of undertakers –
They seem to stare at something up ahead –
For them, it’s in the blood,
To taxi off the dead.
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
One of mine
He or she that fears their fate too much
That dares not put the question to the touch
To gain or lose it all
Are about to carp it
You poor sods
If Bob sticks this up as “Rudd Redux – an exchange” it will break the intertubes.
THE END
Of the ALP
Reader 1,
You want to speak to me of compassion?
You want me to feel sorry for your dog?
You want me to empathise with your feelings?
And this coming from one who has uttered every obscenity at me?!
They say you are a reader,
well then, read more.
In this case Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Especially Kant and Nietzsche.
Think more.
Stay focused.
And then ask me again.
………………….
Reader 1, let me tell you a story. It may offer you a way in.
Many years ago I found myself in the company of friends, acquaintances, and strangers on a friends property in the mountains. We were there to gather and celebrate an occasion.
The winter air was just cutting at our ears and it made the bourbon hot to hand and throat.
Of the men present most were with me; friends loyal, trusted and true.
Of the strangers there were men with glowing red eyes encased in black sockets. Some laughed and performed strange drunken jigs in front of the bonfire, others still lingered at the shadow line, their glinting belt buckles a reminder of their presence.
The winter air made the tobacco steam thickly and it felt as though I could reach up and pull down that scalene trapezoid Corvus so clear were its lights.
So clear.
Fueled by bourbon and speed and beer, fueled by the company of each other, the rushed night air, and the frantic lickings of the bonfire, the strangers grew restless and anxious.
It wasn’t long before the the first words were exchanged between them and my own.
Bottles were tossed to the ground as gauntlets were in another age, peacemakers gathered, separated men with a grabbing of collars and a turning of bodies, and offered all around new bottles as balm.
The spatial arrangements at the bonfire grew more structured, the happy lolling of drunken men had disappeared and the slow dance of confrontation had begun.
I pulled to the side with 4 of my boys and we did as our nurture instructed; we allowed the combatants to resolve their reasonless dispute.
Some of theirs pulled in and out of the shadows, the glinting of the metal and the low murmuring our only signal to their whereabouts.
I pulled heavily on the bottle and looked up at the night sky.
I looked for planets. Venus and Jupiter had probably shown themselves in the morning – early birds that they are – Mars and Saturn, my planet Saturn, were ther somewhere during the BBQ, and little Mercury was perhaps undressing as my eyes scanned the skies.
I looked for falling stars upon which to invest a wish.
My head spun like a child’s top,
As I heard the first click of a rifle,
was it a rifle??
Near the shack 3 of mine were beating a man to the ground. Another of theirs stepped in to help him but was quickly reappraised of the situation.
The man lay senseless as 2 of mine stepped back, snarling a warning to another of theirs who thought to adjudicate.
Several of them then stepped out of the shadows and into the full orange glow of the bonfire.
A bottle fell hard onto the head of a friend.
I remember recoiling at first, as the shards of broken glass ricocheted and bounced off of my head and face. I recoiled, arched my back and sprang,
onto the bottle carrier with a blood vengeance.
2 of mine followed.
We fought with several of them as a similar sortie was developing on the other side of the bonfire.
Drunken men, fighting under the stars of all Creation.
I could taste blood and as the boots hit my ribs I looked up and wondered whether I had seen another constellation.
After a few minutes the fighting subsided as the more sober ones from both sides pulled back the delinquents.
It was little more than that.
It was over.
Men searching for bourbon bottles, lighting cigarettes, gruffly acknowledging combatants, swearing at each other with a smile.
It was over.
It was a release and it was over.
I wiped the blood from my face with my flannelette shirt and sought the shadows behind the parked cars for a piss. My head spun, drunk, punch drunk. I’m sure I was smiling to myself when I heard a noise.
I turned to see in the cold grey silver light of a wintery June night the barrel of a gun pointed not one metre from my chest.
I thought it a dream, a drunken head battered hallucination.
But it was not.
2 or 3 drops of piss left my dick as I looked up to face my assassin.
I don’t remember much about him, a jacket, a rugby league beanie, a beard.
I looked up at the stars, that huge belt heaving glitter, and I asked him to put it down.
I asked him.
I said, put it down. It sounds like an command, but it was really a question.
The rifle barrel was a slender thing, a dark stick, that’s all.
And I was frightened, so frightened that an electric pulse of sobriety called to quick attention the staggering, drunken senses.
I knew that madness and drink and fear can do crazy things.
And this might just be one of them.
I was very frightened.
I told him he would have to put it down or shoot.
There was no other option, that he had boxed himself into just those two options.
It wasn’t really 2, it was less than that.
Approaching sounds forced his uncertain hand and he swore at me and slinked back into the shadows.
He was never going to shoot.
Never.
It was to scare me into thinking he was more than what he was. He thought the darkness would cloak him, that it would confer upon him a title he did not yet possess. But a man like that would never possess a title of any standing.
Never.
And so with my mind fried with drink and fear I unzipped my fly and let loose the remainder.
The next morning the man lay in pool of his blood by the side of his GT Falcon.
He had left me with no choice.
From the moment he thought to step out of the shadows he had given himself no choice.
His friends picked him up, coughing, spitting, hacking, blood, and asked us no questions.
Not one.
…………………..
We were raised as much by our parents as our environment: that one who gives must also take, that one who crosses a line can no longer draw a line, that one who takes an action must expect a reaction. It was a law as definite as the of Newton’s.
And so it is with you Reader 1.
In my arguments with Quixote you stepped out of he shadows and called me the kinds of names that in my previous life have led to blood and broken bones, you thought that language is a casual thing; idle noises that signify nothing, elementary constructs with little design or purpose, you thought that meaning could be hollowed out, that it could be delivered without a return address, you thought that interpretation was your domain, that I had somehow forfeited the right, ceded the right,to interpret according to my mind, my life, my experience.
You thought that words only had meaning when you uttered them, or that that could convey emotion only when you felt it.
You were mistaken.
You are mistaken.
I’ve asked you this question before but it seems you have difficulty in comprehending its meaning or relevance, so let me ask it again – do you think that your calling me a psycho is somehow better than me feeling happy that your dog is dead?
Do you presume to understand the measure of those words to me?
Do you presume to understand their meaning and context in my world, my life?
Do you presume to place them on scales to see which is the weightier?
And you thought I would stand to have someone with their hand on the scale???
You must be joking?
You must be joking??
All of your presumptions about the nature of language and the nature of interpretation had confused your mind and so you fell prey to that insidious conceit that you had given yourself choices and that you had given yourself an upper hand, that you had skewed the argument in your favour with your feelings of indignation, disgust and righteous anger.
Like the fool in the shadows.
Like the Fool in the shadows.
Never presume to know the life of another Reader1.
Never presume to understand and account for the interpretative world of another Reader1.
It is, in my experience, an elementary and cardinal mistake.
That’s all I have to say to you. Everything you need to know about my feelings on this matter are recorded above.
I ask that you never speak to me again.
My disgust may soon temper into sorrow.
By god, you’re a dickhead. A dickhead and a psycho with no common sense. What a winning combination.
yeh but as Nietzsche said, all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
Not quite what he said and as you’ll note, doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t know if he said exactly that, but he did allude to his solitary walks through the mountains and how in these circumstances the principal themes of Thus Spake Zarathustra were essentially dictated to him, as if spoken by an external voice.
Einstein was sitting still when he came up with the theory of relativity. I’m sure there are many great thoughts that occurred while stationery. That sheds doubt on the idea that it is the walking itself that is the deciding factor. You might think while walking, but not by walking. The thoughts coming to him as voices ties into his line that we are all just experiencing ourselves, not determining ourselves, and the walking has to do with his other sub-theme regarding the primacy of the physical to one’s being which is elementary but often overlooked.
In summary, all great thoughts are not caused by walking.
What about walking on a treadmill, jogging on the spot, treading water, test driving suede shoes on a moving floor? Walking and not walking, Zen Rousseausim, see his Reveries of a Solitary Walker.
He was sitting relatively still. To be truly still he would have been dead.
Perhaps he was..err Standing Still?
Very good BMan & Stan.
Nothing like a 7.30am laugh.
Ta.
To Untitled, 1966 – a flawed though deeply unsettling series of images.
Good job.
Sincerely,
PS – Can I ask you a question?
Thanks.
If that is autobiographical, and it certainly reads as such, tell me how you travelled from that to what appears to be a sufficient understanding of Theory.
Thanks again,
F.
Nice story 1966. Now go and write a novel.(fiction(
Reader 1 Sorry about your drover’s dog
Yes shad, U66 knows his words, he can write non-fiction and fiction equally well. Like Bob Ellis he has got talent, he is creative. He must have plenty of stuff published…
Why waste his good words on R1, who does not even understand them…that baffles me…
Wow Helvi!
He sure does.
Scary stuff Untitled, 1966.
Reader 1 Why don’t you go to the RSPCA and save a stray. You could call him Fabian or Fab for fabulous or better still Fabbott
I just don’t know, Shad. The sound of his breath, his little night terrors, his way of stopping every couple of meters to smell things. You can’t replace that. Fabbott, however, is my favourite out of that list.
Everything is replaceable, more or less, and even though what replaces may never replace what’s replaced, the general principle applies.
You could try a docile and submissive man, then you’d get all three qualities back – the fear of the dark and his infantile need to be cuddled, his hoary breathing after a session of Scotch and cigars, and his quaintly disturbing habit of sniffing behind other women’s ears and trying to guess the perfume brand, a frankly carnal activity to which he deflects criticism of by virtue of his fragrance fetish.
A docile and submissive man called Fabbott. I was thinking of maybe getting a bird and taking it everywhere with me on my shoulder, the way I used to carry around my pet mouse Herman in a little furry pouch until another tragic incident involving a piano. (This was decades ago. It’s been one heartbreak after another since.) I could always go for both, of course. My man Fabbott and a bird called, possibly, Willis. Carry him around in a pouch in lieu of toilet training. Willis, I mean.
You had a pet mouse called Herman? My head’s spinning! I had a dog called Herman, a cross-Lab bitch who was dognapped from a disinterested neighbour and stayed with me for the next 14 years, the poochy love of my life. Like many old bodies, she eventually succumbed to cancer and we had her put to sleep.
And your Hermy? You mentioned a piano. Tragic incidents involving pianos usually conjure up images of squashed body parts, but I’m thinking late night at the keyboard with your little pal sitting quietly at the deep end, immersed in her gnawing of the contra-octave C key and you went off to bed and absent-mindedly closed the the lid on her? Sorry to hear that. I know how close our animal friends become.
Two canines might be more humane or even three. Fabulous . Faggot and Fabbott.
They’ll have to hurry up and find the next ALP PM… the Gillard/Bruce Wilson/AWU/Extortion scandal is rapidly coming to the boil.
wHAT ABOUT THE obeid,mcdonald moses ,directors of white and cascade energy, a correctional facility awaits them. If not then it is open house on crime and corruption in NSW and the brown paper bag just keeps going around.
Your ALP and their mates, and their Union cronies – the corruption experts. The closest thing we have to the Mafia in this country.
Just for my own reference, do you hand on heart really, truly, deeply believe that? It’s alright by me, but do you really believe that?
You forgot Roozendaal.
I’m a true believer althumbs