IN RECENT DAYS there’s been some argey bargey about Rupert Murdoch’s intervention in the election campaign, so early and so viciously.
He sees himself as a kingmaker who can, from distant New York, even after voluntarily relinquishing his citizenship for financial gain, call the shots in an election campaign in faraway Australia.
Kevin Rudd is fond of saying that Murdoch has “a democratic right” to direct his newspapers to go in hard against the government, but he does not. He has no more “rights” regarding Australian politics than any other foreigner.
Indeed, it could be argued Murdoch has less rights than other foreigners, as he gave up his Australian passport willingly, as a mature man, not by some accident of birth. He made a deliberate decision to deal himself out of Australia in any moral sense of the word. And he did it for the least honourable reason of all: to make money.
Australia became too small for Murdoch’s ambitions, so he left it. Now he wants to style himself as an Aussie, and come back to his homeland, again to make money.
Nevertheless, it is Australia that spawned Rupert Murdoch, a pox on the world’s media and its culture. and Australia has a lot to answer for, to the world.
Our nation is still a small place, where the odd billionaire or two (particularly if they own the lion’s share of its media) can push politicians around to effect beneficial changes (beneficial for themselves!) in the national agenda.
Under attack for unethical practices everywhere else, Murdoch seems to have retreated to his spawning ground where he can still kick butt and be thanked for it by cautious lawmakers, anxious not to get on his wrong side. Call Australia “Murdoch’s Last Redoubt”.
With his brittle newspaper businesses approaching terminal decline, propped up by other parts of the News business empire, particularly Foxtel in Australia, Murdoch has nowhere else to go. It’s “Australia, or bust” for Rupert Murdoch. Australia is where he’ll make his comeback, and show the world he’s still top dog.
The bottom line of Murdoch’s opposition to Labor being re-elected is this: he owns a media company specializing in news, publishing, music, sport, television and film.
The NBN will render that investment almost worthless.
Of particular concern must be the Foxtel division of his Australian enterprise. It relies on outdated, proprietary technology and linear programming, delivers moderately high performance only for a premium price, is shedding customers, and is under threat from ubiquitous ultra-fast broadband – and all the television, sport and cultural opportunities it offers – about to be installed Australia-wide, in the form of Labor’s NBN.
Beleaguered as it is, the Foxtel monopoly still qualifies as Murdoch’s Australian cash cow. It props up his beloved, but loss-making newspapers here, giving the News operation in this country the vague appearance of being a proper business, instead of the plaything of a sentimental old man yearning for the smell of printer’s ink, and the aphrodisiac of naked power.
Murdoch has stripped himself of his young wife, has acceded to the forced break up of his international News Corp conglomerate, has cut a swathe of retrenchment and sackings through long-standing and loyal staff members, has spent millions buying up TV rights from such diverse organizations as the AFL and the BBC, and has generally cleared the decks for action.
Ever styling himself as an “anti-Establishment” figure, he is out to prove that he knows best. Australia, his last redoubt, is the laboratory where he intends to prove to the Establishment naysayers and bean counters of New York and London that he can still cut it, that the old ways of influence peddling, monopoly and political bastardry are still the best way to operate a corporation.
A large chunk of everything that is shown on our cinema screens, bought in a bookstore, played on a cricket or football pitch, written about politics, or viewed on Pay TV pays a tithe to Rupert Murdoch for the privilege. He has a finger in every pie, perhaps an entire fist.
The NBN – Labor’s NBN – will kill that stone dead. Not today, not tomorrow… but the funeral bells are tolling.
*************************************
The story of modern technology is about personalization and down-sizing, customization and a somewhat counter-intuitive return to cottage industry, where mass customization will be the norm.
Ten years ago, for example, hard disk “non-linear” film editing technologies were so expensive and scarce that companies such as AVID scored special film credits at the end of blockbuster movies, right up there with Kodak, Panavision and Dolby.
Today, there are thousands of such software packages, available for as little as $50, running on PCs or laptops that are an order of magnitude more powerful than the special hardware platforms that companies like AVID used to lever their editing software into the major studios.
But now…
Kodak is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Film is hardly ever used to shoot movies, and more and more is being phased out of cinemas for projection purposes.
Panavision, long famous for the quality and expense of its camera equipment and for setting standards that others could only hope to emulate, finds itself now as just one of many companies offering high quality optical gear to the film-making community.
Today, from JB Hi-Fi, you can buy a camera more powerful and of higher quality than the flagship Panavision kit of ten years ago, for under $1,000. Editing software is ubiquitous. Ditto for color-grading software, used to make the output of these cheap cameras look “more film-like”.
The only thing out of reach of would-be modern film-makers – and they’re just one small example – is easy access to the means of distribution.
Enter Labor’s NBN.
*************************************
A little-commented aspect of Labor’s NBN is that upload speeds can be as fast as download speeds, if the user upgrades and uses the extra bandwidth. An upload speed of 100 mbps per second is easily fast enough for an ambitious film-maker to stream his or her latest creation, not just to a select paying audience in cinemas, but to the world. The NBN will be offering speeds of up to 400mbps to users who have a use for that bandwidth.
Once every home in the nation is enabled as a potential filming, editing, special effects and broadcast facility, Murdoch’s domination of cinemas with his trashy blockbuster product can be bypassed.
Of course not every homeowner will turn into Cecil B. De Mille, but enough might to take the edge of Foxtel and FTA television profits.
You BET he doesn’t want the NBN.
But there are other uses for the NBN besides making movies or documentaries destined for a wide audience.
Writers can completely assemble learned works, text books, novels, or whatever they fancy on a home laptop and publish it via the internet, to be read on Kindles, or just with a browser.
Bye-bye Harper-Collins.
Citizen journalists can write about politics or sport, or cooking, or travel and publish their efforts from wherever they happen to be at the time of publication.
Another nail in Murdoch’s lumbering old-technology coffin: his domination of news.
His empire, based on control of several anachronistic means of production that only Big Money can presently provide – printed newspapers, bound books, cinemas, subscription television broadcast – is under direct threat from Labor’s NBN. It is a killer app, as far as Murdoch’s business model is concerned.
Publishers of all kinds of creative material will no longer need to pay the Murdoch ferryman for a ride to the other side of the river. The NBN is a bridge across that river, and its being built with public money, for the benefit of the public.
If Australia’s Labor NBN is built, other countries will be quick to emulate it, lest they be left behind.
*************************************
It’s not just Murdoch, and with him other publishing companies and television enterprises, that are threatened by an NBN.
Lazy Big Business movers and shakers, the pin-striped “bizoids” so beloved of the financial papers, too used to being similar large fish in the small Australian pond, as Murdoch is, will see their rent-seeking ways challenged as smaller, tech-savvy businesses go around them, under them or straight through them.
In my own area of expertise I can source metric standards from the internet, develop new software to crunch the numbers, create 3D emulations of the particular part, send a 30 megabyte “build file” via email off for 3D fabrication and have the a practical, working part in my hand in a week… without leaving my office.
Thousands of small businesses and creative designers are doing just this, right now. Labor’s NBN will permit hundreds of thousands more to join the bandwagon.
As parts and applications get bigger and their distribution to various fabricators becomes more intense, Labor’s NBN – eventually, with only modification to switching gear at exchanges, capable of many hundreds of times it current advertised speed of 100 mbits – will easily cope with this increased traffic.
By contrast, the Coalition #Fraudband, copper-based system, which may well meet current demands, will fall over within a few years, too clogged with the extra data to be effective.
Faced with the obsolescence of the “sheep’s back” as the national economic standby, the end of the mining boom, and the imminent desertion of Australia by international car makers, what does Australia have left to fill the manufacturing and technology vacuum?
Should we continue to bribe car manufacturers to stay here? Should we pass special laws to limit wage increases as a regressive way of increasing the profits of vested interests and their tired business models?
Or should be increase productivity and innovation, not just by tweaking outdated methods, but by inventing new ones, in many cases new approaches to commerce and industry that have been lying dormant, waiting for communications technology to catch up with them?
The NBN as a means of communication of ideas, as well as finished product specifications, without having to pay a tax to the business models of the past and their indolent proprietors, is simply a no-brainer.
Labor’s NBN will enable savvy entrepreneurs to go fully peer-to-peer, cutting out the middle man.
Of COURSE Rupert Murdoch, and his bizoid mates don’t want it to be built! That’s a no-brainer, too.
*************************************
The diversions now running in political argument – it’ll cost too much, Murdoch allegedly welcomes the NBN, Turnbull’s straw men of this morning where he argued like a slick lawyer trying to bamboozle a drowsy judge with tech-speak about nodes and insinuated obfuscations about who’ll charge more – are completely beside the point.
The only questions that need be asked of Labor’s NBN are:
1. Can we afford NOT to build it?
and…
2. How soon can we get it?
Labor’s NBN will be another world first, capable of almost infinite expansion, future proofed until the laws of physics are repealed.
The Coalition’s #Fraudband is already obsolete, before the first sod has been turned.
#Fraudband is perfect for Foxtel’s purposes, as long as there are few competitors vying with Murdoch to use it.
The #Fraudband model has room for only one Pay TV provider.
Labor’s NBN has room for literally thousands, from one-man-bands to small community outfits, even to languishing experiments like Fairfax TV (languishing because they can’t get the bandwidth necessary to put out high definition product).
With Labor’s NBN, Murdoch’s antiquated Foxtel model with its klunky hardware, contract-based sign-up protocols, and absolutely shithouse, canned American program content (Pawn Star Wars or Repo Men anybody?), will be just one of many enterprises going after the viewer’s dollar. The Big Fish will be reduced to a minnow among minnows overnight.
*************************************
Murdoch’s defenders claim that he’ll still be able to control Pay TV in Australia because his buying power will allow him to gobble up premium content… so why should he be scared of Labor’s NBN?
To this, I say: “Complete codswallop!”
Once Labor’s NBN is up and running, Murdoch’s tied programming and strategic buys won’t be worth a stamp, as by-passing his programming bottleneck, going direct to the originators, becomes a national sport.
Want to watch the BBC? Just log on to bbc.co.uk. Bugger Foxtel. Problems with BBC programming being tied to UK-only viewers? Use any one of hundreds of proxy servers to bypass it. And it’s not even illegal to do so.
Want to watch the footy? It won’t be long before the various football governing bodies realize where the real action is. And, to hurry them up, someone will certainly re-broadcast their best efforts straight off Foxtel, for free (and yes, for a time, that will be illegal… until Big Footy twigs that joining them is easier than beating them).
Make no mistake, Murdoch, already smarting from his disastrous investment in My Space, and his dwindling revenue from dead-trees newspapers sold in checkout queues, a laughing stock among his fellow board members in New York, doesn’t understand the power of something like the NBN… except for one thing: he knows it’s an existential threat to his entire empire. But as much as he can expand his own business, the NBN will allow other competing businesses to expand further and faster.
Commercial oblivion is staring Murdoch in the face.
The one remaining gold brick in his withering Australian operation, Foxtel, is about to turn into a lead balloon.
And if it works here in little Australia where he can buy and sell political parties and governments, imagine what will happen once other countries – where he doesn’t have so much influence – catch the NBN bug.
Ditto, and ditto again for the other lazy bizoid types who thought digging up dirt, making cardboard boxes, buying and selling property, money lending and a host of other tired old business models were a sinecure on the path to billions.
*************************************
Once ordinary people start talking to each other, by-passing the commercial Siegfried Lines of the past, so lovingly built on bribery of political parties with trifling donations that reap hundreds of times the investment… once this happens, the death knell of old business will be sounded and we, as a nation, can get on with it. We can lead the world.
Labor’s NBN is, therefore, THE key policy of this election.
Labor’s NBN links everything else together – productivity, innovation, manufacturing, communication, health, education, social interaction and national infrastructure.
It will allow new industries to burgeon in ways that have either not been thought of, or that haven’t been possible… until now.
Don’t listen to quibble-talk about the cost of this versus the cost of that, or whether asbestos in pits should veto national infrastructure development.
Don’t take any notice of Turnbull’s disgraceful and hypocritical lawyer talk about the details on page 45 of the third appendix to the NBN subcommittee report (or whatever piffling detail he’s using as a smokescreen on the day).
Take no notice – especially if you live in a regional area and are using the NBN – of Warren Truss’s dissembling about how no-one in regional areas has the NBN, or will get it in the future. They do and they will.
And, by the way, if you DO live in a regional area…
… consider the possibilities that the NBN will bring to your town as businesses either remain there, or migrate to it, to sample the delights of innovation in the beautiful environment you are so justly proud of. The Holy Grail of decentralization will be one of the NBN’s greatest benefits.
I say again: the NBN is a no-brainer.
That simple statement is all that Labor politicians have to say, to cut to the chase on this issue.
They have let themselves get caught up in the undergrowth of fear, uncertainty and doubt about costings, alleged pork barreling, and rollouts.
Labor needs to talk about the forest, not the trees.
“It’s a no-brainer” is all they have to say. You’ll be able to hear a pin drop as that simple concept sinks in, and heads start nodding eagerly in agreement.
Of all the prizes up for grabs at this election, the demise of the Murdoch empire via the NBN is the most glittering of them all. Two birds with one stone. Throw in the end of Abbott, and you’ve won the trifecta.
You only need half a brain to realize that.
THE PUB 
I just did a response to slav g which seems to have disappeared.
slav g, if you’re around, I’ve got windows from the Spotlight search for ping t5 and traceroute on independentaustralia. I’ll retain the windows rather than go ahead with anything at this stage until I hear from you.
Thanks for your help so far.
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
Abbott rolls out the Tea Party stuff at its woest.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/residency-for-refugees-ruled-out-20130815-2rzzy.html
Abbott’s travelling bubble.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/just-keep-smiling-and-dont-say-too-much–well-make-it-20130815-2rznp.html
MUST READ! Gay Alcorn unloads on the undue, extremely biased election coverage by Murdoch via News Ltd.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/murdochs-voice-still-reaches-voters-20130815-2rz7l.html
When is a good journo going to nail Abbott or Pyne about their education funding commitment’s schools/student formulae?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/education-unions-say-public-schools-to-lose-funds-under-coalition-20130815-2rznq.html
Yes, thankyou very much Mr Abbott. You will be an international embarrassment should you win.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/australias-international-standing-at-risk-from-harsh-politicking-20130815-2rzp8.html#poll
Section 2 . . .
Lenore Taylor hammers Abbott on costiings.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/15/tony-abbott-climate-plan-maths
If I were an Essendon player I’d keep my trap shut!
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/jobe-watson-warned-over-asada-20130815-2rzn6.html
What an arrogant prick!
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/focus-on-costings-will-bore-australians-to-death-says-joe-hockey-20130815-2ry67.html
Wishful, but entirely understandable, thinking.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/lay-down-the-law-on-political-debate-20130815-2rzcc.html
Section 3 . . .
A cracker from Andrew Dyson.
Cathy Wilcox on Facebook.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/cathy-wilcox-20090909-fhd6.html
David Pope has been very effective lately. This is no exception.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
David Rowe takes us to the Northern Territory.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO
MUST SEE! Ron Tandberg on Abbott’s gaffes.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/ron-tandberg-20090910-fixc.html
Straight from the LNP play book
Good morning, BK.
Tone and Scoot really are pond slime. Good thing the voters don’t care about the asylum seeker issue anymore.
BK,
The link to Dyson takes us to Room 404.
And from the Land of the Free –
Some cartoons on North Carolina’s anti-voting laws.
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/08/15/cartoons-of-the-day-north-carolina-loves-passing-laws/
Astounding hypocrisy from the Repugs.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/14/1231242/-Arizona-Republicans-who-voted-against-disaster-relief-demand-their-state-get-disaster-relief
Good morning ducky
Try this link to Dyson.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/opinion/andrew-dyson/20090819-epqv.html
BK,
That goes to 13 August. The link on PB works and it’s a beauty!
Looks like all those coalition voters that said they preferred Rudd were lying.
Fiona.. ” Jaycee @ 9:39pm,
Given some of your comments over time, that’s a bit lily-livered of you.”
Strangely..it is my fertile imagination that causes the distress!…in reality I can just turn the head away…but in the imagination I have to see the worst of the worst!….
2Gravel
Well, fancy that! Memo to Caucus – come in spinner!!
LNP. seriously back to the white Aust’ policy.
“Looks like all those coalition voters that said they preferred Rudd were lying.”
Three comments:
1. That is a surprise. NOT.
2. So many Caucus dumbwits fell for it.
3.They are getting the result (and the turgidity) that they deserve (but we don’t).
BTW, I spent yesterday, BB’s big day. at the Nepean Hospital while MrsBrianmcisme, had a knee replacement. All went well surgically, now she endures the slow rehah.
Brianmcisme
My best to Mrsbrianmcisme, I’m sure you’ll look after her superbly.
*GRRRR … WordPress ate my comment*
Brian,
Judging by the knee replacement ladies I saw in my orthopod’s waiting room, Mrs Brianmcisme will do very well.
All the best to her, and to you.
Brian
My best wishes to Mrs Brianmcisme. The move to Rudd was certainly a step back.
So the whole reasoning behind the NT economic zone brainfart is an American-style seat by seat campaign. Labor unlikely to lose many votes because of it, but hope to gain votes where it matters.
I seem to remember a lot of us saying Coalition supporters were pushing up the Rudd polling figures. I keep saying this – the Libs knew Julia Gillard was a threat, they wanted Rudd back because they saw him as beatable. I can’t believe the boring, dithering, lack-lustre campaign Labor has run so far is the same one strategists intended for Julia Gillard. Were they caught on the hop by the resurrection of Rudd and left floundering around for a new campaign? It looks like that to me.
I know I’ve been making a few negative comments about Rudd and Labor lately, I know some here think we should only post positive things becasue a lurker might see the negative stuff or some such reason. I disagree with that, let me explain why.
There are a lot of lurkers here, if someone involved in Labor strategy is lurking and reads some not-so-favourable remarks about Rudd or the way Labor is running their campaign then I’d expect them to take the feedback and act on it. Carrying on as if everything is sunshine and roses and never posting a word of criticism is not the way to go.
So whether you like it or not I’ll keep on saying what I think and I’ll keep on hoping that someone lurking will see what is meant as constructive criticism and act on it.
GD – You should see something like this; if you are seeing any packet loss from the ping, or the ping/traceroute isn’t reaching digitalpacific.com.au (the host for IA) there’s a networking issue:
$ ping -c 5 http://www.independentaustralia.net
PING http://www.independentaustralia.net (101.0.72.226) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=24.1 ms
64 bytes from ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=20.8 ms
64 bytes from ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=20.8 ms
64 bytes from ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226): icmp_req=4 ttl=55 time=21.0 ms
64 bytes from ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226): icmp_req=5 ttl=55 time=20.7 ms
— http://www.independentaustralia.net ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 20.798/21.522/24.101/1.295 ms
$ traceroute http://www.independentaustralia.net
traceroute to http://www.independentaustralia.net (101.0.72.226), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 0.458 ms 0.677 ms 0.653 ms
[—–snip—–]
6 ae2.br1.syd4.on.ii.net (150.101.33.22) 35.030 ms ge-0-0-1-1052.csw02.eqx01.digitalpacific.com.au (202.167.228.136) 22.062 ms 22.834 ms
7 ge-0-0-1-1052.csw02.eqx01.digitalpacific.com.au (202.167.228.136) 23.942 ms 21.838 ms 22.818 ms
8 xe-1066.csw02.eqx01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.154) 30.040 ms 29.973 ms xe-1058.csw01.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.121) 29.954 ms
9 xe-1058.csw01.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.121) 29.882 ms ae1-1018.tor-sw04.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.94) 31.932 ms xe-1058.csw01.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.121) 30.514 ms
10 ae1-1018.tor-sw04.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.94) 33.139 ms ded367.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.72.226) 33.398 ms ae1-1018.tor-sw04.voc01.digitalpacific.com.au (101.0.127.94) 34.614 ms
Brian
My best wishes to Mrs Brianmcisme for a speedy recovery.
Leone
I’m with you, Janice and Patricia, whom I hope is okay, haven’t seen her for a while.
Brianmcisme I hope your wife recovers as well as my 78 year old Mum, she is now 8 weeks from her knee replacement and is back walking without a stick, catching buses etc. She is now agitating the doctors to have the other knee done! Its a relief for us her family that it has gone so well. She’s so well she back to arguing about politics with me!
BINGO!
having trouble posting..test.
I’m back GD and Jaeger has explained what my goal of those two commands were.
If you are not seeing any packet loss, or traceroute completes without issues then you have some caching problem with your browsers. I’ll try and help as much as I can during the day but I have few work meetings that I need to attend.
Mr Mac, if your good lady’s knee was done by an Asian orthopaedic surgeon, then he’s my next door neighbour.
I saw him come home last night late and the thought, “What do you say to your wife when you get home and you’ve been sawing bones all day?” just popped into my head.
brianmcisme, this blog on my hip replacement may help a bit:
http://wp.me/p30JJG-4o
bb,
Should be OK unless the wife makes some cutting remarks.
TA’s theme lately: “Rudd is not man enough.”
Someone gave me a copy of The Stalking Of Julia Gillard for my birthday.
You can understand what THAT would have done for my blood pressure.
I stayed up last night reading it until 4am.
It confirmed just about everything I’d suspected – right down to the last dot on an “i” and cross on a “t” – about what was going on… the politicians, the journalists, their motivations.. everything.
It was like she’d taken mine and many others’ posts on how the media works and how Rudd did deals with certain explicitly named members of it, how they used their columns to pump up the public into hating her. Then, when the public was softened up enough, conducted polls to make the “dissatisfaction” numbers look “scientific”, then wrote up the polls, and on it went, in an endless circle jerk.
Most importantly, it convinced me I hadn’t been mad, like some insane conspiracy theorist, in what I wrote about the media and its manipulation. I’m sure others felt the same upon reading it, in regards to their own points of view.
I was wrong about Rudd. No, I don’t think he was as sweet and innocent as he made himself out to be…
I underestimated his capacity for hatred, and his single-minded, virtually insane desire for revenge. I missed just how utterly self-obsessed he is. I thought there was room for reason in his mind. There was not.
Walsh’s book sets it all out, in excruciating detail, literally chapter and verse. Names, dates, dissections of strategies and tactics that we all saw, but were told were just conspiracy theories. A complete circus, kabuki, a TV REality show.
Everything I suspected and wrote about was real. Realer than I thought at the time.
G.D.1
Apologies for not replying last night. Not being experienced with Mac O/S , I am really not much help.
With his power in demolishing JG, it is hoped that again he will be using it to demolish TA.
BB
Have you ever suggested to your next door neighbour that he throw a couple of bones over the fence for your dogs?
Jeesus….it feels like all the threads of a ghastly, gristly garment are being stiched together for this election….it will be interesting where the cowardly MSM. go with this super-hard, back to the future asylum policy…..too busy brown-nosing their career, I’ll wager!
BB, is he a prankster?
Hi dear, I’m home
Hello love, how was your day?
The strangest thing happened. A lady came in for a knee reco. Refused to be anesthetized, refused to lie on a gurney, in fact, she even refused to sit down!
What did you do?
(singing) I sawed her staaaaanding there
BB
You certainly copped a lot of flak at PB for your astute posts. I am pleased that you were right all along. It is a shame that he doesn’t have the same driving hatred for the coalition, anyway, I guess it is too late for him to do the same to them. Twitter seems to be suggesting he has even lost pinstripes support.
Refugees’ two best friends deciding on the destiny of all those souls.
I tell you again, in case you missed the urgency….Abbott is a Fascist, with a capital ‘F’….if he gets control of the government, the AFP. will morph into his ‘Gestapo’ and blogs like this will be outlawed and perhaps worse.
I’m not just saying this to type words onto a screen…it is the inevitable result of a combination of political justification, media obfuscation and civil domination…three power plays of authotarian regimes…this IS getting serious.
The LNP. shadow front bench has very, very little talent..they will only be the “face” that delivers the policy..THAT will be made by a small group of “faceless people”….The internet will be strictly controlled “to censor socially unacceptable material”..the MSM. and ONLY the MSM. will deliver all official govt releases and Chrissy Pyne will have his eye on you!…….well may you ask..: “Which eye?”
Anyway…with climate change about to hit the fan…we’ll ALL have our hands full, not just Barnaby!
And JC if you want evidence look at the collusion between Libs and various police forces and the different standards applied to Abbott and Reith and then Thomson and Slipper
‘Someone gave me a copy of The Stalking Of Julia Gillard for my birthday.’
Confirmed! That had to be Michelle my belle
What a friggin dog’s breakfast!
http://m.afr.com/p/national/rudd_camp_unravels_in_the_thick_xC6o78Rgb6qLeIm6JzPSEP
Rudd as the star campaigner was all of a figment of his own fevered imagination.
BB
My reaction to that book was the same. It validates everything you (and some others here) were saying for ages and being yelled at for doing so.
How stupid are all those MPs who fell for the wormtongues in the party, swallowing the ‘Julia will have to face an appalling campaign, we must spare her that’ lies and the ‘Rudd is the only one who can save the furniture’ garbage. My admiration is for those who stuck to their guns and voted against the whiteant, grimly soldiering on in the hope of an election win, and even more so for those who resigned and and abandoned careers that still had a long way to run rather than work with him again. Those resignations speak volumes. How appalling the man must be. We lost the brightest and best, thanks to Rudd.
I think the plot goes way beyond Rudd wanting his old job back. Rudd was used. I don’t think he understands that yet, maybe one day he’ll realise. I hope he never does, because it will need a Labor election loss to ram it home to him and much as I despise Rudd I don’t want an Abbott government.
Now that Rudd’s OM ‘supporters’ have achieved their initial aim – getting rid of Julia Gillard – they have gone cold on Rudd. He can’t expect the support from them now that the had just a month or two ago. He never realised that they were playing him, he thought they were on his side, eagerly running with all the leaks he could provide, backing him every day, filling their columns with ‘Rudd is Labor’s only hope’ bumph. He did not grasp the main game, the one some of us always suspected. They had their orders, they carried them out, they achieved their first goal with Rudd’s unwitting help and now they are working on the second- a Coalition election victory. And Rudd, too self-obsessed, too crazed by his obscene desire for revenge and too full of visions of his own magnificence, never saw it coming.
Whatever happened to that scuttlebutt that was so damaging it would blow the Libs out of the water? It was mentioned quite a bit on this blog earlier this year, and that Labor was keeping its powder dry till the campaign and would not detonate till they saw the whites of the enemie’s eyes.
If there is a bomb to be thrown (and I personally very much doubt there is), now might be the time. Their whites couldn’t be much whiter.
To be honest I don’t think there is a hope in hell that the campaign strategy will change. I have a suspicion that the reason Rudd put his sons in plum positions at Campaign HQ was so that he’d have at least a couple of people who would agree with everything he said, besides, what campaign experience do the two Rudd juniors have anyway?
MM53…you hardly need “evidence”..it’s got that Mussolini “get the thugs to stand behind me nodding their heads” look….and the stench!
Best wishes for a speedy return to mobility Mrs.Brianmcisme. I know a few knee-replacement people and all were up and running in a very short space of time. The wonders of modern medicine.
At the moment I am pooped after spending more energy than I’ve got to help a cow in trouble calving. I plead guilty that I make the wrong decision last evening when I decided she would hang out another day or so and therefore didn’t put her in the maternity paddock. Anyway, I did a head count at 6.30 am and she was missing so I went looking for her. Found her sprawled out in a narrow gully – her calving had been interrupted by foxes so that with the calf half-way out she stumbled into the gully. The foxes attacked the calf and the poor cow was helpless both to protect it and to finish pushing it out.
Anyway, I finished delivering the dead calf but mother had given up and refused to help me to help her. She was badly bloated but I didn’t have the strength to sit her up so she could belch out the gas. Finally got hold of No.1 son at work who came home and we managed to get her into sitting position. Luckily, the vet had given me a bottle of anti-inflammatory drug which helps prevent calving paralysis in these cases so hopefully the cow will be able to get to her feet so we can bring her home this evening.
So that is my trauma today. I’m too old for this lark now !