If you never hear from me again, it’s because Bushfire Bill has dealt with me for publishing this brilliant post that should have been up on Sunday.
Just because he hasn’t had time to do the pics!
I ask you!!!
Anyway, if I’m not around tomorrow, that’s why.
So, I leave you with . . .
If Murdoch has to write letters to Abbott through his newspapers, then that means he’s not getting to him via the usual channels: closed door meetings, a quiet word, Friday night get-togethers, surreptitious visits to the New York News HQ, and so on.
Abbott seems to have gone off the reservation. He’s always had a high opinion of his own judgement and intellect, and now there’s no holding him back.
Truly Murdoch has created the monster. It has broken its shackles and now wanders the world, frightening children and shirt-fronting adults at random. Its crazy ideas, reflecting its piecemeal make up – part journalist, part thug, part priest – are being let run wild. It won’t even listen to its master now, the man that gave it life.
Only one thing can tame its excesses, and that is Peta’s sweet whisper. She is with him night and day, always at hand, just off camera, in the room at even the highest level meetings. But lately even her calming words are not being heard.
Abbott is becoming used to being in charge. He’s learning that what he says goes. He’s never had this before. He’s always been the protégé, the golden boy who’s headed for great things, guided by the wisdom of a wise patron.
Well, now he’s arrived – and he’s doing to do those great things. Why confine your psyche to just inside your head, keeping counsel, waiting for The Day when you can paint a nation with your grand ideas and force even the mighty to call you “Sir”? There’s no more waiting. This is destiny. Tony’s mind has expanded, and now his canvas is a nation, but one he’s never loved for itself. It’s always been one he wanted to change to look more like where he came from, not realizing that place too has changed and has moved on.
He got rid of the schoolboy fringe he used to cover his thinning hair. He applied … something … was it Botox? Or some surgery? … to his forehead and his eyes to ease out the wrinkles. He’s combed his hair over like he’s seen real leaders do, the better to look the part. And his speech patterns have changed. He sounds more hesitant now, as if every word he utters is gold, to be taken down by adoring scribes and kept for posterity.
Sure, he can’t resist the simian swagger, and his suits are still too tight. That’s the boy in him, wanting to show off his physique. The hands are everywhere too: defensively, pushing away questions and criticism. He used to have a cruder use for his hands in his boxing days. One king-hit out of nowhere and he’d deck his opponent. But he can’t do that now. He has to settle for mugging his old punching bag, Joe; not really satisfying, but something of an outlet for his natural instincts.
Maybe he’s timed it well. Maybe he thinks he can cast off his backers in the media because the media isn’t as powerful as it once was, making and breaking kings and queens. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong.
But he can’t cast off the ridicule. As he tries harder and harder to be ever more serious and statesmanlike, he’s the butt of more and more jokes. He believed once that cometh the office, cometh the man, but the cartoonists cruelly still depict him with those ears, those budgie smugglers, that hairy torso, those exaggeratedly cruel lips. They never show the New Tony, the one he’s always wanted to be, and was always told he could be. They laugh at him and his narcissm instead.
The man must be going crazy with frustration. It’s all fallen apart. His Macbethian plan to claw his way to the top has ended as all such progresses do: with more enemies to use as shields, no-one to trust, more blood and more dysfunction.
He thought Labor was dead. He killed it himself, didn’t he? He won so many battles against it … and still Labor lives. He made promises he shouldn’t have, and which he couldn’t possibly keep, right on election eve – and now they, like Labor, are coming back to haunt him, no matter how much he licks his lips, protests his innocence and redoubles his lies. Now he’s lying about lying. Did he say he’d never do that? He can’t remember. There have been so many lies. So many contradictions. So many speeches and interviews. Can he be expected to remember them all?
Bill Shorten just won’t play the way Tony wants him to play. Bill – boyish, quiet, considered, and intelligent, won’t come on to the battlefield and fight him man to man. Bill’s biding his time. It’s a war Abbott doesn’t like: one of manoeuvre, skirmishing, probing, even agreeing with him from time to time, avoiding a fight. With each clash Abbott loses a few more devotees he can’t replace. Volunteers and supporters are thinning out as they contemplate whether being otherwise engaged is the better option. He just can’t line up Bill Shorten for the sucker punch. He has to face it, Bill intends to go the full fifteen rounds. Until that time, Bill will dance and sting to weaken his opponent so that Abbott will be wounded and bloody when they come out into the ring for the penultimate bell.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. People have always been scared of Abbott, of his sheer naked aggressiveness, his mercilessness and of his ability, without reflection, to turn on anyone who gets in his way. He’s always liked being surrounded by bodies – friends or enemies. They’ve been his substitute for sandbags. But bodies bring blood and flies. People start to notice the stench of death around him.
The Catholic Bishops saw his temperament, and threw him out of the seminary for it. Jesus didn’t need a holy warrior to minister to a parish. He needed someone with empathy and humility, not a thug.
Australia celebrated his thuggishness, in a shameful period where they valued light entertainment because they could afford to. The nation was prospering. Vilifying Gillard was good sport. We kidded ourselves that if we called Gillard a liar over legislation then that would mean Global Warming would go away. We were on top of the world … ironically because Labor put us there while other countries fell by the wayside.
But now, digging holes and lecturing other nations has lost its authenticity. We’re becoming a basket case state, with a basket case leader at the helm. It’s no longer Reality TV. It’s Reality. Slogans and slagging-off won’t put meals on tables. A nation that is taxed higher and suffers cutbacks to basic services simply to satisfy its government’s insane surplus fetish – when that government puts little back by way of innovation, and actually closes productive industries down – is not a prosperous nation. It is a nation that is being laid waste by its own rulers to serve their vanity.
Why did we close down manufacturing? Who cares if imports are cheaper, if no-one can afford to buy them? What’s the point of the government’s coffers being full if the peoples’ are empty? And then there’s the dollar … are imports really even cheap anymore? We have high price tags on the things we’ve taken for granted for so long, and diminishing capacity to compete with those who charge them. We’ve pissed our economy up against the wall, in favour of a few brief, nothing moments on the world stage so that Abbott can indulge himself in his schoolboy fantasy of someday growing up and being respected among his peers. He had the chance to impress world leaders with his vision for a magnificent estate, and all he talked about was how he’d tidied up the back yard and pulled out a few weeds. Not satisfied with stalking the land, the monster now stalks the world.
THE PUB 
M R-D
So, not worth the paper it’s expensively printed on.
There has been a lot of grumping about the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, with accusations of bias and interference being flung about.
First –
Noted Coalition supporter and John Howard buddy Les Murray, one of the judges on the fiction panel (another Abbott/Brandis political appointment) is not at all happy about Abbott intervening to split the award so Richard Flanagan became a joint winner. He says Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize winning book is ‘pretentious and stupid’. I think Murray is pretentious and stupid, he became much too big for his boots when Howard asked him to help draft a new preamble to the constitution which, thank goodness, never got past the draft stage.
Here’s a refresher on just how awful Murray’s work was.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/7657248/perambulations-on-a-preamble/
Next –
Mike Carlton has stirred up a lot of controversy with his comments the other day about the bias shown in the work of Richarard Colebatch, chosen winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. Today Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra, president of Honest History and a past winner of that prize has come out in support of Carlto’s comments, saying Colebatch’s winning book is “a dubious version of the industrial history of Australia in the Second World War”.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-11/stanley-australias-secret-and-unhistorical-war/5960090
If you want to botch literary awards then you allow George Brandis and Tony Abbott to elect the judging panels, stacking them with their mates. Allow the judges to choose as winner of the history section a book that reflects a right-wing version of history, disregarding more worthy entrants. Then have the PM intervene at the last minute to avoid embarrassment when an acclaimed, prize-winning work of fiction is rejected by said stacked panel because the author criticised the government.
Missing link to the Les Murray story
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/11/row-over-tony-abbotts-nasty-intervention-to-split-literary-prize
Thanks for the numerous birthday wishes from friends up and down the bar at this so-friendly pub. The wishes are much appreciated. The actual anniversary day is next Sunday. – 81 years ago, a home birth at 15 Rydge Street Belmore.
brianmcisme
Since you wouldn’t fess up last week I decided I’d pick today as halfway, so my fault, but never fear, I’ll still wish you many happy happys on Sunday. Bonus.
Brianmcisme,
A relatively small world.
My mum was born and lived in Robert St Belmore which was on the south side of Canterbury Rd and I lived in Shelley St Campsie until 1979 in the area that given the street names was called the “poets corner”
gotta love the abbott laugh once again
http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/12/11/rundle-pynes-trip-to-whine-country-wont-help-libs-win-south-australia/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/11/australia-still-constructive-in-climate-talks-despite-julie-bishops-rhetoric
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2014/12/10/plan-b-the-political-appeal-of-a-gp-co-payment/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/high-wired/high-wired-update-well-all-be-rooned-warns-mega-rich-vc/story-fnizwcu6-1227152194764 no paywall
Hilarious!
Ukranian President, speaking at an MH-17 church service, on Tony Abbott:
“I said to him… He is one of the most popular foreign leaders in Ukrania!”
Ah, if only Australia was Ukrania… we’d all be eating borscht, and we’d all love Tony Abbott.
Alas…
Reminds me of those small time rock groups that Molly used to have on Countdown…
“They’re big in Latvia!”
Power gone off.
Ned and syd freaking out
phone wifi hotspot working
Laptop 50% battery life
baked beans for dinner looks like
joe6pack,
I can see why
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR083.loop.shtml#skip
Not a huge amount of rain atm but thunder and lightning.
Syd hates the lightning then wants to chase a ball
Ned hates the thunder and is under covers now.
We had power breaks this morning. A huge storm, lots of lightning strikes. I was safe in a bunker in the physio department at the local hospital. We didn’t hear the thunder – I was scared out of my wits by a huge thunderclap while I was in the carpark though – but the lights went off three times in ten minutes. Someone announced that the gas had been turned off in the staff canteen because of ‘all the lightning strikes’ so there were no hot lunches today. The storm has been circling all afternoon and is still lurking.
One good thing – all the rain has left things too wet for an outdoor Christmas event held by a local club planned for tonight. It has been cancelled, so that means the fireworks that went with it will not happen. Thank goodness! The Summer Shock and Awe shelling season started a week ago and at this time of year the shelling becomes almost a nightly happening. I really can’t stand fireworks so a night without them is a very good thing.
power back on
watching sky pvo newshour
PVO sounds like he does not like the coalition at all.
The 3 panellists are coalition supporters
Awwww, poor Ned. He needs a huggle/
Millions of dollars of restitution to the HSU ordered by the court.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/11/former-michael-williamson-associates-ordered-to-repay-8m-to-hsu?CMP=share_btn_tw
Brian & RNM 1956,
My Uncle Len lived at 30 Robert Street, Belmore from the early 1950s until he died in 1977.
Well I played soccer for, and hung around the Belmore PCYC from ’66 til a long time later
I have to say that there were parts of The Long Road… that didn’t make sense to me. It seemed to be a pastiche of several ideas, stitched together in a not entirely convincing form, as if the author had started several novels and had to find a way of combining them. Some of the literary stitching came apart by the book’s end. But, then again, life isn’t neat, either. It comes apart at its own seams, more often than not.
On the other hand, there was one part that I couldn’t bring myself to read at first. It was pretty intense. I didn’t need the grief that those present at the time had to endure and find a way of coping with. When I eventually DID read it, it was as gut-wrenching as I’d anticipated.
For an alternative, an (in my opinion) equally literary – and first hand – treatment of the Burma Railway, I highly recommend Russell Braddon’s The Naked Island. No wonder it sold 2 million copies. It’s one of those books where you close it up after a session of reading and the real world seems not real anymore, compared to the world Braddon describes in his work.
The style of The Naked Island is more straightforward than The Long Road…, but not journalistic (as is Rowan Rivett’s Behind Bamboo, which I have also re-read recently).
Between the three of them, you get a clear impression that things went on between human beings that should never have happened.
Although all three books are different in style and execution, they have one common point: that revenge against the Japanese, by the end of the war, was the last thing on the POWs’ minds. In that, they all share a humanity, where a celebration of freedom and love, plus the sheer magnetism of normality, is far more powerful than base retribution.
Revenge was for those who came after, those who never had to suffer the excruciating pain of seeing their mates murdered in monstrous ways, ironically in the name of civilization… a civilization I never want to experience or have anything to do with.
Seeing as we’re talking dogs… Cozzie has neither fear of lightning or thunder.
He isn’t worried by big dogs growling. He doesn’t give a fig about the cold nor the heat.
But he is vulnerable to vacuum cleaners. And when it comes time to comb his beard after a bath, he goes to water.
I guess someone snagged a whisker once, and he’s never forgotten the experience. It’s the only time he’s ever tense.
Otherwise, for the rest of his little body being coiffed, he just lies over and goes to sleep.
The Indian Rubber Dog.
BB
I’ve not yet read Flanagan’s book or the 2 others you mention. Though I have shared emails with his brother on the subject. I’ve focused on books relating to the old-man’s Btn and material from the AWM.
One I have read that’s worth the effort is “Doctor’s Diary and Memoirs” by Dr Roy Mills. It reinforces your comment ” …you get a clear impression that things went on between human beings that should never have happened.”
And when a young bloke, I never heard dad or his mates say anything about the Japanese and they had every right to do so.
HtH…
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
EXCELLENT READ! Waleed Aly psychoanalyses our PM.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/nothing-can-wipe-the-smile-off-this-mug-20141211-124nn9.html
Abbott has much to ponder over the Christmas break says Mark Kenny,
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/opportunity-knocks-for-tony-abbott-in-new-year-20141211-124s3m.html
Michelle Grattan – Abbott should ask Credlin what to do about Peta.
https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-abbott-should-ask-credlin-what-to-do-about-peta-35387
The much-loved Dick Cheney spills the beans on GW Bush on the CIA torture. But he still gets a foot rub from the atrocious FoxNews mob.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/george-w-bush-knew-about-cia-torture-says-dick-cheney-20141211-125f1h.html
David Cameron gets caught out over his comments on redaction of the CAI torture report.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/11/cia-torture-report-british-spy-agencies-discussed-redactions
Fancy that! Morrison gets accused by a Senate committee of all sorts of nasty things about Manus Island.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/immigration-minister-scott-morrison-accused-of-spinning-manus-island-tragedy-20141211-12577c.html
And Michael Gordon goes on to say that the government is still in denial about Manus.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/government-still-in-denial-on-manus-20141211-1258ta.html
Abbott’s literary intervention makes a sham of a peak event.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/australia-books-blog/2014/dec/11/prime-ministers-literary-intervention-makes-a-sham-of-peak-event
The Puff Adder comes out to decry the lack of women in Abbott’s cabinet.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/sophie-mirabellas-remorse-over-lack-of-women-in-abbott-cabinet-20141211-1250re.html
Can-Do Newman’s miraculous lies.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/here-we-joh-again-campbell-newmans-spectacular-lie-exposed,7180
Section 2 . . .
Stephen Koukoulas writes on the continuation of our labour market weakness.
http://thekouk.com/blog/the-labour-market-weakness-continues.html#.VIn2jjGUeSo
The jobs market is stuck in a rut
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/12/11/australian-news/jobs-market-stuck-rut
It would be safe to say that the only winners out of this saga were the lawyers. And big winners at that!
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/christmas-clemency-plea-for-great-southern-investors-20141211-124sxl.html
Julie Bishop is on a collision course with Abbott’s climate change spear carriers.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/12/11/policy-politics/bishop-collision-course-abbotts-climate-sceptic-courtiers
The three worst things the Liberals did yesterday.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2014/12/11/the-three-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-135/
The Human Services campaign is a predictable response to the unfair pay stance of Abbott and Abetz.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/human-services-campaign-is-predictable-response-to-tony-abbotts-unfair-ps-pay-stance-labor-20141211-124ur5.html
This is a shame. John Faulkner has been an ornament to the Senate.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-elder-john-faulkner-resigns-from-federal-parliament-20141211-124q9m.html
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/father-of-the-senate-pays-one-final-act-of-respect-to-parliament-20141211-124y2q.html
Laura Tingle looks back at Faulkner’s career.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/john_faulkner_to_leave_the_senate_vrM5LlgBfViraLvOdvoUiK
Greg Jericho examines generational inequality.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/dec/11/generation-y-have-every-right-to-be-angry-at-baby-boomers-share-of-wealth
Section 3 . . .
Big problems with bullying within the Victorian police force.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria-police-facing-huge-backlash-from-members-over-bullying-claims-20141211-12537p.html
The trouble with raw milk.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/calls-to-ban-raw-milk-after-death-of-melbourne-toddler-20141211-1258o0.html
Ron Tandberg in the doctor’s surgery.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/ron-tandberg-20090910-fixc.html
Cathy Wilcox and the CIA’s just desserts.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/cathy-wilcox-20090909-fhd6.html
A nice little cartoon from Broelman.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4l1XahCcAAd-94.jpg:large
Brilliant work from Andrew Dyson – Tony Abbott, the listener.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/andrew-dyson-20090819-epqv.html
Scary stuff from David Pope.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/david-pope-20141123-1t3j0.html
David Rowe farewells Faulkner.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO
There are rumblings that Downer might get a knighthood so Rod Clement has his say.
http://www.afr.com/p/home/cartoon_gallery_rod_clement_dKTsVx4omRRhInyIOB7oFN
Simon Letch with Abbott’s summer holiday.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/simon-letch-20090908-ffni.html
Uh-oh…
The Press Gallery metaphors and symbolisms have started.
Beazley had his Karl Rove moment. Rudd sucked fairly on a sauce bottle. Gillard had shoe malfunctions (and what about those glasses… what were THEY all about?). All of them little things that the literary giants of opinionation wrote up as ominous signs of something else.
Now Mark Kenny has turned to Abbott. Kenny sounds a little reluctant – it could have happened to anyone, he tells us – but…
Strewth!
Kenny reckons Abbott’s used up all his political capital!
I have little doubt that Kenny will unveil a miraculous recovery for Abbott starting just after Australia Day, but that this scribbler even contemplates the possibility of Abbott down at political heel is a first.
David Pope
We all know Abbott is a sexist pig, an old-fashioned male chauvinist of the worst kind. We saw how he accused Julia Gillard of playing the gender card. Well, Abbott now sees things differently.
Abbott, on Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech –
“Just because the Prime Minister has sometimes been the victim of unfair criticism doesn’t mean she can dismiss any criticism as sexism or she can dismiss any criticism on gender grounds,” he said.
Abbott on criticis of Peta Credlin –
“Do you really think my chief of staff would be under this kind of pressure if her name was P-E-T-E-R, instead of P-E-T-A?” he said.
PM plays gender card over Credlin criticism
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/12/pm-plays-gender-card-over-credlin-criticism?utm_content=buffercfd30&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
This “bath milk” is a bit too nudge nudge, wink wink for my liking. If it’s being sold for “cosmetic purposes” only, why isn’t a bitterant added (like they do to metho etc.) to stop people drinking it?
jaeger
Because it is intended for drinking. Labelling it ‘bath milk’ is a sneaky way of getting around the law. The stuff is popular with gullible health nuts who believe commercial, pasteurised milk is the food of the devil. I would bet good money that the poor little kid who died because of his stupid, gullible parents had not been immunised, and that the other kids who became ill are also not immunised. The anti-vax crowd are much the same as the raw milk crowd.
There are plenty of web sites preaching the benefits of raw milk. Just Google. They are full of scarey claims about why commercially produced milk has to be ‘sterilised’ to make it safe for drinking. This milk, they say, causes all sorts of health problems. They say we need to get back to living the way we used to live, before our milk was interfered with.They paint pretty pictures of happy cows feeding in green meadows, producing ‘safe’ raw milk. It’s all bunkum.
The trouble is this garbage comes from the US, where dairy cows may be factory farmed and fed a diet based on soy and corn. I wouldn’t drink that milk either. But in Australia things are different. I know exactly where my local milk comes from and the cows that produce it feed on lush green pasture.
Cheese made from raw milk is also banned because it is unsafe. That doesn’t stop hordes of foodies seeking out the stuff because they believe it tatses sooooo much better than cheese made from pasteurised milk.
The abbott is feeling hard done by these days. There is panic evident in his body language and, for a few seconds at the end of his presser with the Ukraine President it showed up in the sound of manic laughter that one would only expect to hear from a lunatic in the throws of a psychotic episode.
Jaeger
It is indeed a “nudge nudge” . A couple of weeks back there was a segment on RN’s Bush Telegraph (?)featuring a raw milk advocate /activist . When discussing how people buy it they were not at all shy about bringing up the “cosmetic use ” ruse as the way to get around sales bans. Lots of on line sales.
If I see much more of this ‘Abbott the boxer’ rubbish I might do something violent. That Waleed Aly piece had a meme and a cartoon depicting The Idiot as a boxer. That is about as honest as me claiming to be a ballerina because I took part in a few dance school concerts as a child and owned a pair of pointe shoes.
Look, let’s get something clear. Abbott had never boxed in his life before he went to Oxford. At Oxford he started out as a rugby player, but was dropped from the team. He wanted that Oxford ‘blue’ and boxing was the easiest way to get it. No-one wanted to box.
Abbott fought in just four amateur fights all of which ended within minutes – or seconds. He had no idea about technique, he was a ‘put your head down and go out flailing’ boxer. That he managed to knock out his opponents was more luck than anything else, or perhaps the blokes he fought against were laughing so hard at this colonial biffer that they were unable to defend themselves.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/tony-abbott-at-oxford-university
After those four bouts Abbott never boxed again. He admitted he was terrified in the ring.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/boxing-mma/tony-abbotts-brief-but-successful-boxing-career-steels-him-for-bigger-game/story-fnii0bqi-1226706646170
Abbott is no fighter. He is a thug, a bully, a liar and a coward. He allows others to do the dirty work and runs away at the first sign of trouble.
And something else – now, with so much ‘Tony has to change’ hand-wringing gong on we are told every day that Abbott was a great opposition leader. Apparently that means he should also be a great prime minister, if only we would give him a chance. It’s another myth, like the boxer myth. He wasn’t a great LOTO either. All he did was follow instructions. He was carefully coached in three word slogans, given funny hats and fluoro vests and plonked in front of cameras where all he had to do was pick up stuff or look at stuff. If questions were asked he was instructed to walk away – so he did. If someone dared ask about policy he had a slogan for that too – ‘200 policies, costed and ready to go’. No-one ever bothered to ask what those policies actually were. The Idiot had said his peice, the press pack was content. What he did have was the backing of the MSM and the adoration of a bunch of fawning, grovelling lickspittle journalists who reported every stunt as though it had been the arrival of a new messiah.
I have more sympathy for the (blessed) cheesemakers:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/raw-deal-shakes-up-the-curd-mentality-20110404-1cypn.html
http://thefoodsage.com.au/2011/09/11/raw-milk-cheese-debate-faces-final-nail-in-the-coffin/
http://www.foodsafety.asn.au/resources/unpasteurised-milk-and-cheese/
leonetwo
Enthusiastic agreement with your critique of the “Great Opposition Leader”.
Put up by big financial backers, coached in his lines & given a clear track by the media. As has been said before, he opposed pretty much everything & stopped nothing.
I think I might have seen the first unveiling of the “Great Big Tax” line. It was on 7.30 in the days when that was worth watching. Abbott used it on Kezza. I remember laughing, thinking “well Tony, you’re gonna have to do better than that”. But he didn’t, & it’s to the Australian media’s eternal shame that they pressed him on nothing.
I still think they’re desperate for a chance to try their own “rebooting” to save their own legacy.
I really don’t know why people call Waleed Aly a leftist. It’s clear to me that he has admiration for Tony Abbott and deep down wants him to be successful, while on the other hand he has little but contempt for Labor.
You know, like most of the rest of the MSM.
This says it all about the torture report.
Oh gosh, this is awful. The Victorian agriculture minister Jaala Pulford’s daughter died. She was only 13.
http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2760451/premiers-statement-regarding-jaala-pulford/?cs=61
BK
And this headline sums up how debased they have become.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/12/10/only-cia-agent-jailed-torture-program-whistleblower-who-confirmed-its-existence
I missed this Fairfax editorial for the Dawn Patrol this morning. It’s a good one.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-wrong-prescription-for-medicare-20141211-125aef.html
kirsdarke
The biggest tragedy in life is the loss of your child.
Here we go! Medibank Private sneakily slashes rebates for many items leaving policy holders well out of pocket.
It was bound to happen. Nice work Abbott, Hockey and Babyface Dutton!
https://ama.com.au/ausmed/private-medibank-sneaks-out-cuts-benefits
What hope have I got? None, a ice-block’s hope in Hell, That’s what!
I applied for a job through Seek and got a call back from a recruitment agency, a message left on my mobile. I spent the rest of the week trying to contact the person. I keep leaving messages. and no, no-one can take you call because S is the one handling that process.
Today. five days later I finally make contact with S, “We have already filled the roles, sorry” and I see that you have not had recent contact centre experience.
“We had an overwhelming response.”
I am sure she did. The job was in a SA state government call centre taking inbound calls and required a current aged care police cleareance. If ever a job was one i could do in my sleep that was it.
“An I see you have not worked in a call centre since 2006.”
“I worked for two years in a Westpac Collection Call Centre. Those are skills you never lose.”
“Yes but it was in 2006 and the employer wants recent call centre experience. You have the DCSI clearance.”
“Yes. I work for an agency now with a weekand shift and I hold a current clearance.”
“But we had applicants with recent call centre experience:
“Well, I have a mix of skills and experience that are perfect for that role. I worked for the public service in contact roles. worked in a call centre, have aged care and carer experiece, current work in the sector and am studying to be a psychologist.”
She then sounded a bit interested. For the first time. What was your name again, you are welcome to apply for any other roles that come up.
Other pubsters will no doubt understand the frustration of trying to get past a recruitment agency. In the old days i would have logded and application addressing the criteria by a closing date. At least then someone would have read my resume and letter before tossing me on the scrap heap.
then
The new head of Trades Hall, the power behind the Labor win in Victoria. Luke mobilised volunteers to door knock Bentleigh, Mordialliac, Carrum/Chelsea, Heathmont? to swing 4 seats from Liberal back to Labor. We will hear a lot more from him.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/trade-unions-the-new-broom-in-the-hall-20141211-124vdg.html
Read in conjunction with Guy Rundle’s piece yesterday about the Prahran win. I don’t really understand Rundle’s style of writing but I think he says that the left of the ALP and Greens are undertaking grassroots campaigning
(Grassroots campaigning is labour intensive and requires energetic/committed spruikers.)
http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/12/11/rundle-if-morrison-rolls-abbott-the-greens-could-end-up-stronger-than-ever/
I pity the poor b’tards who have to do this forty times a month. they would be slitting their own throats after six months/
that is awful. Losing a child makes my beef so trivial. my condolences to the family.
Puffy sorry to hear about your lack of success getting past the well groomed callow yoof guarding the employment door. I am amazed at the ignorance of head hunters and their devotion to good looking young workers who are pliant and too ignorant to know when they are asked to do stupid things.
Experience is not a valuable commodity in this job market
Waleed says a lot of sensible things, but left leaning he is not.