Well here was me waking up and thinking that I would have to dig through the most dreary news from our most dreary Treasurer and try to distill some truth from the wort of Labor spin and misdirection that is the budget and what should I find in today’s news but a lovely nugget of goodness; Labour is out of No 10 and the Conservatives will form the next British government. A far more cheery prospect on this fine autumn morning.
Queen Elizabeth II greets David Cameron at Buckingham Palace in an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister in London. Source: Getty Images
CONSERVATIVE leader David Cameron has become Britain’s youngest prime minister in almost 200 years, after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.
In a carefully choreographed dance, Cameron visited Buckingham Palace and was asked to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II less than an hour after Brown himself tendered his resignation to the monarch.
Cameron, whose party won the most House of Commons seats in last week’s election but fell just short of a majority, is, at 43, the youngest British leader since Lord Liverpool in 1812.
The high political drama came as the Conservatives and the third-place Liberal Democrats hammered out the details of a coalition deal after the country’s inconclusive election.
Standing outside 10 Downing St. alongside his wife Sarah, Brown announced he would travel to see the monarch to resign – allowing Cameron to take office, possibly as part of deal with Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Of course I am yet to find out the details and I have some reservations about the terms that he has had to pay for a deal with the Lib Dems but an end to Labour rule is a good thing and I really hope that the land of my forebears can now have a chance to recover from the PC madness that has made it the epitome of officious stupidity, now what was that about a grand repeal bill???
Next cab of the rank is our Dear Brother Number One… assuming that there is not a coup from Labor’s red army faction that is…
Cheers Comrades
Maybe Abbott can do a deal with The Greens & Senator Steve, Iain?
I suspect that he won’t need to Ray
How good is your memory, Iain? Do you recall Johnny Howard being in a similar position in the opinion polls a few months out from the election in 2001 and then again in 2004?
In 2001 Howard got lucky with two events – September 11 and The Tampa. Then in 2004 Latham (who had been doing better than Abbott currently is) was found out by the electorate and they turned on him in droves.
Abbott’s got ‘form’, Iain, and that form is he’s a bloody bad campaigner. My money says the electorate will reject him as a retrograde and yesterday’s man. Of course though, when it doesn’t matter it’s easy to use those simplistic turn-back-the-clock ideas to gain popularity. But he understimates the intelligence of voters if he thinks he can go into an election with no forward thinking policies and no vision whatsoever. Howard did that and beat Keating but then again, after 13 years in Govt and a not forgotten early 90s recession, Labor were always going to lose in 96.
Keep up the cheering. It’s like watching Collingwood supporters getting all carried away about being on equal terms at 3/4 time, but knowing that as sure as night follows day they’ll get over-run in the last quarter,
OMG, I just saw your new masthead.
Look again Ray !
I made the mistake of clicking the “make this image your featured picture”option this morning and I could not work out how to undo it so I have uploaded a lovely beach picture to get me through to the weekend because Me an the Missus are off for a jaunt in the car and weekend at the beach with out the kids…
Thank Christ you removed the Queen and her new Tory PM, Iain. We know you’re a conservative but that would be too much to bear.
Iain, the Queen masthead is back – under this post only, it seems.
Well that must be how the featured image works adding to the header but only for individual posts , Hmm I think that there is some potential for posts with particular themes to have their own header images
Iain, you are absolutely the last person on this blog who should be invoking the Sex Pistols.
I know exactly what side you would have been on at the time.
Bloody revisionist, conformist and Johnny-come-lately.
JM
What a cloistered life you must have had! When I was a student and when Punk was actually a new idea I was a rather dedicated Punk. In any case you are entirely wrong to think that a conservative is incapable of appreciating the issues of personal liberty that was at the heart of much of the Punk ethos or the value of rebelling against the rampant consumerism that was inherent in the pre-punk popular music. I suspect that you are too young to remember those times anyway.
On top of that some of the music and poetry was very clever and some of it like the Pistols stands up very well for its audacity and some of it was just great music In the great music category there is the Clash’s “London calling” and then there is the poetry of John Cooper Clarke :
and there is this:
Iain, you have a very narrow view of the punk ethos if you can align it somehow with conservative values.
(And it seems I may be a little younger than you, if you were a Uni student at the time. Besides I don’t recall – the Saints private parties aside – Brisbane as exactly being a hotbed of punk music. As far as I remember, it wasn’t.)
Actually JM Brisbane had a very active Punk scene. I can say that because I was actually here at the time and you obviously were not. On top of that I was a lefty at the time and even though my politics have changed my affection for some of the music remains. So I would suggest that your assumptions about me are in error.
Iain, I’m talking about 1975/6 which you obviously aren’t. Once 1977 happened all bets were off.
Oh, and you definitely never understood the punk ethos if you think it can be twisted to support an elitist, reactionary, hierarchial and conservative political establishment.
JM
Did you live in Brisbane at that time?
Hmm I don’t think so or you would have said so.
In that case what do you base your claims on?
Countdown???
As I said before my politics were different then but with the exception of the Clash most punk bands were not particularly left wing, some came from the art schools and many were nihilistic anarchists, the catch cry of “no future” was not coincidental. But here in Brisbane 4ZZZ was a focus for punk music along with the UQ student union who put on regular gigs called “joint efforts” they had both local bands and bands from the UK.( like Graham Parker and the rumour and Elvis Costello )
If you have a brain your politics change over time and If you knew me in real life you would realise that the last thing that I pay any deference to is social hierarchy or any kind of elitism and surely you have read enough of my blog to realise that I don’t hold any sort of political establishment to be beyond question. The thing that I took from punk was the notions of personal autonomy and the DIY approach. something that was actually rather lost as it became more mainstream.
Iain, I don’t really want to go into this in great detail but I was very closely involved in the Melbourne scene at a very early stage, knew (and still know) some of those involved in Sydney and later (ie. during 77/78) had quite close contact with people in Brisbane and Perth.
As I’m sure you’ll remember (if you know anything at all) the Saints were banned in Brisbane – more than a little to do with the opposition of the elitist, reactionary, hierarchal and conservative political establishment of Bjelke Peterson as it happens.
And I know where that movement came from. Trust me, it did not come from anything remotely associated with conservative or neo-conservative thought. If you think that then you must’ve been a Johnny-come-lately. What you’re doing is restricting the ethos to a narrow stereotype that accords with views you’ve developed later in life and ignoring the wider picture.
During the later punk era the involvement of right wing thought occurred mostly in the UK amongst the skins – but they were pretty much into ska anyway.
You’re on a hiding to nothing with this one.
JM
read my comments on this thread a again because I don’t think that you have done so with any thoroughness at all. Read in particular the bits where I say that my politics have changed but I still like some of the music.
But as i suspected you were not in Brisbane and your entire knowledge of the scene is restricted to hearsay and you still insist that the beliefs that I have come to in this part of my life are what I though and believed as a younger man. That said I am still unimpressed by rampant consumerism and the notion of music as a consumer product. I never was a fan of Joh and I even marched against his protest ban. You and your pals down south actually had it easy because one of the reasons that the scene was so big in Brisbane was because of the very repressive government we had up here. Now I’m not claiming that I was in any way a “mover or a shaker” but I was here I was part of it and quite clearly you weren’t.
Speaking of the Saints This song still has a damn fine message:
I have become rather socially conservative on issues of sexual morality and things like Abortion but you are sadly mistaken if you think that this means that I have entirely abandoned a belief in helping society , the needy and the downtrodden. The fact is that I just think that the left is very much a creature of the “silver-tail socialists” more interested in their fantasies of what working people are than the realities. I have written about things like the BER because I resent the Labor party propping up their sponsors by giving them ludicrously generous contracts which do not give the people value for money. I object to thinks like the the CPRS because I can see that it is just a creature that would enrich the Spivs and shysters and do Squat about Carbon emission. I even think that Superannuation is based on the faulty premise that the economy will eternally expand. Quite frankly I am probably to the left of you when it comes to trusting the corporate sector so I would say that it is you that has not kept the faith with the Punk ethos and not I.