Some weeks ago, Puffy the Magic Dragon sent me 235 photographs and videos from March in May in Adelaide. She said she had photographed every single sign – and having spent all afternoon choosing a representative sample, arranging them into “themes”, and then uploading the jpgs to The Pub’s library, I think she’s right.
Thank you for sharing, Puffy, and also for your patience with me. As you know, the last few weeks have been particularly busy for moi and me mum.
Enjoy, everyone.
THE PUB 
A reminder to Morrison:
http://www.thelocal.it/20140619/thousands-of-syrian-children-alone-in-italy
CK,
You’re coming through loud and clear – and thank you for FDOTM – always a treat.
Not only is F.M wonderful but there are some classic comments as well.
Something Morrison will, no doubt, crow about at Shirelive on Sunday.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/iraqi-asylum-seeker-forcibly-repatriated-one-day-before-outbreak-of-violence?CMP=soc_567
Fiona
Thanks I started to panic a bit there what with the raffle due soon. I cleared my browser data but that didn’t have an effect. If this post works then all should be A – OK!
I will have the raffle post up by 4:30 Melbourne time, CK.
CTar1
There were some amazing “chaps” flying about . The Japanese pilots went in for methamphetamine.
Kirsdarke,
There’s a certain Howard factor in those polls. They’re not really that hard to figure out.
1998: It took Howard until late 1997 to even lose his 1996-election poll lead to the ALP. From then he had a few episodes where it blew out a couple of points to the ALP but Howard kept clawing it back to near parity. It can be seen that his intention to take the GST to the election cost him some points – it actually looks like One Nation did the damage there – but it drifted back to about 49-51 by the election. His ability to dog-whistle, negotiate and handle opponents helped him a lot.
2001: Three things – GST on petrol, Tampa, 9/11. The 2PP was neck-and-neck until early-2000, then the ALP slowly established a good lead, sometimes blowing right out. Howard got it back from 44-56 to about 48-52 in about six months to September, mainly through GST concessions, but was still comfortably behind when 9/11 happened, and it just flipped the figures over. However, the ALP actually gained a couple of points in the election campaign itself. He was lucky with his timing, because it actually looked as if Tampa was costing him votes, and only its tie-in with terrorism mitigated it.
2004: Howard actually established some big leads in this period. He had Beazley on toast. A change of leadership to Latham altered the environment considerably, and the positivist approach of Latham was a winner. But Howard played him like a fiddle, appealing to the electorate to be suspicious of the new boy (also implying Latham was an aggressive lunatic), and eventually going to the polls on a “who do you trust to run the economy” platform. Eight years of incumbency, a buoyant economy and deft tactics got Howard over the line.
None of those tricks worked in 2007. Rudd destroyed him.
I don’t see how any of those approaches can help Abbott. For a start, he’s not a negotiator’s arsehole, so forget about alliances and deals doing him any good. He skulks about opposition leaders and rarely if ever takes them on up-front. When he does, it’s a vote-loser. That also knocks the “who do you trust” tactic on its head. Seriously, people would just laugh at him. War seemed to have detrimental effect on Howard anyway, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as useful without the threat of terrorism.
Plus, you can see that Howard held his own for at least a year in every one of his terms. And his personal approval ratings were high pretty much throughout his PM-ship. Abbott threw away his election lead in less than four months, hung on for a little while, then tanked as soon as the budget loomed on the horizon. And everyone hates him.
The other thing is that Abbott has no ‘heartland’ voter he can appeal to. He’s alienated virtually all of them. This notion he has of setting one section of society against another is bloody useless if he’s attacking all of them except maybe 5% in the top bracket.
A change of leader might shake things up a bit. A complete change of approach by the L/NP would do something. But I don’t think they’re up for either of those ideas, and their backers certainly aren’t.
Re raffle – I won’t be here, but I note CK kindly gifted me my previous week’s numbers last week. Though I’ll take anything.
FDOTM is excellent.
The school chaplans business is one thing that can’t be blamed on George Pell. John Howard, staunchly Protestant, came up with it when he was hanging around Hillsong and sending his ministers there to give addresses to the throng. Howard shamelessly pandered to Hillsong’s huge right-wing Sydney Hills area congregation, so we had the school chaplains program. People love to rave about the Catholic influence on government, but this program came about through the influence of a fundamentalist, right-wing allegedy ‘Christian’ church with some pretty nasty ideas.
ACCESS Ministries , the mob who run the programs, are staunchly Proetestant too. A dig around their website will show you which churches are involved. In some states it’s all in the hands of the Scripture Union, not famous for liking Catholics but famous for their mission to convert the masses.
http://www.accessministries.org.au/
So there you have it, a bunch of very evangelical Protestant churches shoving untrained staff into schools and telling lies by denying they are there to try to convert kids into ‘born again’ Christians. The whole thing is a farce and a very expensive scandal and should never have been started in the first place.If parents want their kids to have a spiritual aspect to thier lives – not necessarily one involving Christianity – then they can do what parents have always done. Organise it themselves.
Obviously the ALP could do with a charismatic leader. That has a galvanising effect on the support base. I don’t think they have one of those at the moment though. And Abbott’s lowered the bar so far Shorten could just step over it.
If you want to see some truly gutsy flying, look at the picture near the bottom of Japanese aircraft attacking ships at Guadalcanal. Only a few metres off the sea under heavy fire.
http://www.pacificwar.org.au/Guadalcanal/Marinesland.html
Remember, Howard convincingly lost the 98 election on 2PP. Only the huge majority of 96 and a successful sandbagging marginal campaign stopped him from being relegated to the dustbin.
Abbott doesn’t have the majority or the skills to replicate that. He will have access to the tremendous treasure chest the Libs donors are building.
All moot anyway, Abbott won’t pull a DD, so we are stuck with near on three years of thugs and goons running the joint. Anything can happen in that time.
leonetwo
Don’t forget Howard’s playing footsies with the Exclusive Brethren nutters.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sect-gave-howard-a-few-tips/2008/01/17/1200419973055.html
When talking about how Abbott would go in an election, we need to keep in mind that the media will do anything and everything to prop him up, like they did in 2013. They have learned from the mistake they made in 2007 (where, in all likelihood, they thought that Howard, being a cunning and devious political operator, would do away with Rudd like he did with Beazley, Crean and Latham and as a result did not pursue Labor as aggressively as they did prior to 2013) and will do anything to prevent Labor from winning.
GL
That is also the way I see things going, the so-called media will play the game giving the libs a hard time until six months before the election when all will suddenly change to:- Labor not ready to govern, another term in the wilderness etc and that we need to give the libs another chance to get things right. It’s the same script over and over again ad nauseum but still the gullible will fall for it.
@Aguirre
Thanks for that. However, the thing that bothered me about 2007 was that Labor’s lead of about 57-43 for much of the year shrank to 52-48 at the election. What I really hope is that this is not a common theme about Labor trying to defeat an incumbent L/NP government, that in the last few months voters don’t decide “Well, nope, I’m going with the devil I know”. That’s probably the grassroots Liberals at work there though, plus the sheer depth of their campaign coffers.
But yeah, like you say, Abbott is no Howard. All his life he’s had everything given to him, or he’s taken it by bullying or sneaky tactics. A second term won’t be something that’s easily given.
Howard, despite being so awful, has been suffering defeats since 1968 so obviously he learned enough from that to last 4 terms.
kk
Yep I could never understand why Howard sucked up to those nutters. More right-wing fundamentalists.
FRIDAY NIGHT RAFFLE
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Rupert Murdoch could be dead by the time the next election comes. He’s old, he keeps hooking up with greedy younger women. Sooner or later one of them is going to hold a pillow over his head and claim whatever is left of his empire.