Barry O’Farrell’s offer to rename Taylor Square Kirby Square after the judge is a measure of how bad a politician he is.
For a start, Kirby is not square, but gay. For seconds, it is a sort of poofter-bashing, celebrating the least ingredient of a massive career in the law, and something he did not choose. And it brings back, as it was meant to, the things Bill Heffernan wrongly, vilely said he did in that part of town. Third, he is still alive, and there are better candidates, happily deceased, and beyond the reach of embarrassment. Wilde Square is fine. Thring Square. Helpmann Square. Hargreaves Square. Chater Square. Hardy Square. Bille Brown Square. Ferrier Square.
Fourth, it is a very nasty thing to do. It is as insulting to a living man as naming a new hospital wing the Barry O’Farrell Obesity Clinic, or The Tony Abbott Hair-Removal Centre.
It’s a nasty, schoolboy, prod-the-poofter joke, and he should stop it, immediately. Now.
Name:
If Barry O’Farrell had a sense humour and called an obesity clinic after himself, people would find it amusing, even endearing, but his idea of Kirby Square is plain ugly and unfunny.
… BO’F's arrogance in power, very few of those born to rule can control this cussed itch
WOW:-my sentiments exactly. As soon as I read this i had the same feelings “Now what is this bastard up to”. I knew it was no good. I have been keeping a bit of a file on Bumper…he is NOT a nice man.
Govt sackings…jobz Jobs-$65million
Hospitals-$3billion cut
Education-$1.7billion cut
Shooting in National Parks
Lied about Coal seam mining
Jacked up the average Greenslip to $578
Local Police area commanders cut from 80 to 50
Rural Fire Service-$20 million cut
Refurbished Premier’s Office-$4.4million
Bumper had an election promise to freeze electricity dividends. He has broken this promise-
-extracting $870 million from families.
Treasurer made an $800 million error in calculating the State’s finances!
It’s my thesis that the rise of the Tea Baggers in the US has given permission to all sorts of creatures formerly not game to come out from under their stones to vomit up their foul minds into public view.
For instance, formerly Joyce would have been an outlier in the Senate, but now he is in danger of being outflanked on climate or issues like yesterday’s discussion of wind farm disease
Besides all that, what about Taylor?
“Taylor was Lord Mayor in 1905-06 and 1909-12. He was a supporter of the Town Planning Association of New South Wales. His civic improvements included the clearing of the slums including Wexford Street, now known as Wentworth Avenue in the City and the widening of Oxford Street and the creation of Taylor Square that now bears his name. ”
http://www.sydneyaldermen.com.au/alderman/allen-taylor/
It sounds to me as if it should keep the name it bears.
O’Farrell’s suggestion seems too glib and perhaps some sort of April Fools Day thing a month early.
It is inappropriate to rename it after him. Typical of politicians it is years after Taylor Square was in any way a centre for classy gays and apart from it becoming very sleazy, drug and crime-ridden and thus subject to ‘gay-flight’, Michael Kirby would only have seen Taylor Square as his car flew past it or when the High Court sat at Darlinghurst.
Better to name it Slipper Square. He has been there more often than Kirby.
….. and given modern day tendencies and illocution, how long before the location is gleefully parlayed as “Kirby’s Queer”??
(and how long before the new PM Abbott sniggers and follows suit with his own nudge-nudge re-christenings.)
So his sexuality is an embarrassing illness? I like that one.
Unfortunately the Kirbz is not at all adverse to findings of a homosexual nature. His retirement seems to be devoted to flying the rainbow flag. Just recently, he was tastefully telling the world all about the uses of Vaseline for sodomite purposes and how the great Gandhi enjoyed such a usage too.
A dirty old bugger who’ll be tickled pick by such attentions.
Could you share the source of this rather unlubricated barb?
For instance:
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3680155.htm
So, a man who has devoted his life to pubic service and risen to undisputed eminence in service of judiciary is reduced to ‘the Kirbz’, in your sense of the man.
How shallow you demonstrate your reflections to be, and consonant with the majority of your observations here.
..’public service’, before the obvious cracks are made.
Lol there are many such nick-names kicking around the law faculty for him. It’s a sign of affection. He’s obviously an icon for many law students. I give a dissenting opinion.
You have been warned about using the private life, or the imagined private life, of a public man to denigrate him in these pages.
You are on the brink of expulsion, and I ask you to desist.
No Cigar Peter.
Kirby himself offerred the alternative interpretation that Gandhi was referring to the vaseline used by his friend because he was a gymnast.
Vaseline of course is used as a sexual lubricant, but cotton wool?? This being the other item Gandhi used in the same phrase.
We do enjoy iconoclasm don’t we?
Why would he even bring it up, then? Not quite a thunderous, provocative end to a speech, is it? ‘PS he once wrote to his friend about the non-sexual qualities of Vaseline. Thank you.’
It was a cringe-worthy attempt to have us all picture Gandhi in an obscene act. Pure debauch, like all the homosexual lobby.
No, it engendered an image of Ganghi in an ‘obscene’ act in your imagination, St. Pete. Your imagination alone. Not in the minds of all of us. You are not omniscient, and err in logic in assuming to speak for all.
Your mind, conditioned as it is to interpret reality as it does in its current condition of placing a priori confidence on a set of teachings thousands of years old and strongly disputed in their veracity, provides you with a unique and subjective interpretation of what constitutes reality.
Don’t make the logically fallible error of assuming to be able to speak for others.
By all means, stake your claim. But be aware, it’s yours alone, and your to defend.
Yeah ok.
But to my mind, ending an important speech about Gandhi with speculation about his sexual practice with another man was not cool. Would a high profile figure end a speech like that on comparable figures? Mandela? JFK? Pope John Paul II?
I just thought it a funny comparison to Bob’s outrage at the Premier’s (similar?)attempt to honour the man.
To quote the middle eastern Gandhi:
“thou art peter, the rock: cold hard and lifeless”.
He said that?
The veil is torn from Peter.
He is certifiable, as we already knew, but of course he is also homophobic and a poofter-basher, at least while he can hide behind anonymity on a blog.
Allthumbs wants to know why Peter hasn’t been banned.
I think the time has come, Bob.
I would have done it on day one, as I would have banned Bird.
No Doug, I want to know why you and others here have not asked for his banning. That is something different.
I have no problem with Peter being here, none at all.
He blogged fairly rarely, and wandered off tail between his legs; and the nature of his delusions suggested that he should turn the other cheek.
Proselytising for any religion is totally unacceptable and it is high time he was removed.
Peter has broken the rules and attacked the private character of a public man he has not met or known well and is banned, banned, banned for life and will not be missed.
Drat
That Kirby oration in full for Peter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIR7Q59TPQ
Maybe he could try watching it, instead of jumping to prejudiced and ridiculous conclusions.
His move to end the requirement that the identity of aborigines busted for petty crime be forwarded to an aboriginal monitoring group within 24 hours, is much more sinister and much less reported, in this neoliberal and “Mulrunji” era.