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Terry Pratchett dies and so does Clive Palmer’s time in the political sun
This is a post about loss, on one had we have the very sad news that Terry Pratchett has died after a very public fight with a form of dementia :
The British fantasy author (left; and with wife Lyn, top right) sold more than 85million books worldwide in 37 languages, but also waged a very public struggle with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years – and was a vocal campaigner of the right to die. The writer is best known for his satirical fantasy novels set in Discworld, a flat planet resting on the back of four elephants, themselves perched on the back of a vast turtle moving through space. Sir Terry’s thousands of fans on Twitter were alerted to the news of his death by a series of messages (bottom right) shortly after 3pm today, finishing with: ‘The End.’ Prime Minister David Cameron said today he was ‘sad to hear’ of the death, adding: ‘His books fired the imagination of millions and he fearlessly campaigned for dementia awareness.’
And then there is the news that , the brick with eyes and senator for my home state of Queensland has pulled the pin on Clive Palmer deciding that he will no longer sit as a PUP member in our upper house. Now I draw theses two seemingly disparate events together because Clive Palmer is just the sort of crazy bizarre political animals that Pratchett was so frond of creating in his disc world novels but sadly for Queensland he is real.
On the upside though I am really enjoying the political emasculation of Clive Palmer far more than I really should be. As a conservative I find this a big improvement for the prospects of government being able to get legislation through the senate.
Thus we can all see that every day can show is both sadness at the passing of one of the best fantasists of our age and joy of something he could have created passing into the political irrelevance it so richly deserves. In some ways the departure of the brick from the PUP may make it harder to pass particular bills but not having Palmer’s expansive ego and endless vendetta against the coalition in play will more than compensate in the humble opinion of this scribe.
Definitely a day of light and shade Comrades
Palmer is dead buried and cremated as a political force you could say that he is like this pillow…
National Security Statement 2015
Very good speech form Tony Abbott
recommended viewing Comrades
Its On
Despite my concerns I am actually happy that this matter as been resolved so promptly and in many ways quite decisively, its also nice for our PM to take the time out fo his busy day to reassure me personally via email.
As most people will now know the spill motion is on. I’m a little sad about this but if this means that the current government can improve its standings with the public. One thing that we can expect if there is a change of leader is that we won’t see the sort of bad grace that Rudd bought to his party.
You can bet that the Liberal Party phones will be in meltdown in Canberra over the weekend
Cheers Comrades
in the leadership change game the trick is not to make an arse of oneself
Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan deserve to be shot and then forgotten
Awaiting execution: Myuran Sukumaran, left, and Andrew Chan. Photo: AAP
“Australian government appeals are neither heroic nor heartfelt; Canberra is merely trying to save their own ‘subject bodies’ from the firing squad, while slowly disposing of ‘abject bodies’ it does not want through inhumane detention centres or returning them to foreign regimes that will probably finish the job for them,” Mr Marthinus said in an opinion piece in The Jakarta Post.
The impact of the executions on bilateral relations is coming under intense scrutiny in the English-speaking press in Jakarta, with conjecture that the decision to drop plans to waive visa requirements for Australian visitors to Indonesia could also be related.
However, this has been denied by the government and is also considered unlikely by migration agents.
And Bali’s Governor Made Mangku Pastika has said he would not like to see the execution take place on Bali because it could hurt the island’s public image.
I wonder If I am alone in feeling somewhat embarrassed by the excessive gnashing of teeth over the pending execution off these two scumbags? There is no doubt that they did the crime, being caught red handed with the heroin strapped to their bodies takes care of that, these two were the ringleaders of the scheme so they deserve a harsher punishment than the other seven idiots. that make up the “Bali nine”gang. That said I am sure that the usual suspects will whine and posture about how capital punishment is wrong in principle. Frankly its not something that I believe. there are crimes that clearly deserve a capital sanction multiple murder, or murder in the name of a vile ideology are obvious to me, as is the repeated sexual abuse 0f children, when it comes to drug dealers its a little less clear. Personally I tend to think that some drugs are worse than others and that those who deal in opiates, cocaine or crystal Meth are worse than those who sell a bit of Ganga.
So in the not too distant future Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan will have their stroll in the jungle , be tied to a post and shot dead this little black duck won’t shed a single tear nor will most of my fellow Ausies either. The usual suspects on the other hand will have an almost orgasmic out pouring of leftist angst all because these men happen to Australian citizens…
The sooner they are shot the sooner they can be utterly forgotten because they certainly do not deserve to be remembered.
Cheers Comrades
If scumbags are shot in the jungle and no one sheds a tear…
At last after seven years of madness the country can draw a line under the Asylum seeker disarray created by Kevin Rudd
I must say that waking up to the news that the government has finally manged to secure the passage of a bill to reintroduce TPVs has really brightened my day.
“The crossbench shouldn’t have been put in this position, but we have,” the Motoring Enthusiast party senator said.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon also wrestled with the decision, but like Muir believed the amendments would give hope to thousands of refugees stuck in detention.
In return for their support – and that of the Palmer United party – the government agreed to quickly process the claims of 30,000 asylum seekers languishing in detention centres across Australia.
PUP leader Clive Palmer said that backing the legislation meant 1,500 asylum seekers – including 468 children – would soon be leaving Christmas Island.
But Labor and the Greens accused the government of using those children as a bargaining chip, arguing that the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, could release them at any time, if he wished.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie – who opposed the legislation – attacked the government for keeping children detained for so long.
“These kids have been sitting there for 15 months, and you want a pat on the back? You’ve got to be kidding yourselves,” she said.
Particular concerns were raised about the return of TPVs, a Howard-era policy condemned by refugee advocates and repealed by the previous Labor government.
The government also agreed to increase Australia’s humanitarian intake of refugees and to give those on bridging visas the right to work.
Now the government can virtually clear the legacy backlog of mendicants that we can thank the Labor party for creating way back at the beginning of the Rudd regime. Long time readers may remember when I correctly predicted the subsequent flood of boats Further despite voting against the bill in the Senate I very much doubt that any future Labor government will be rushing to repeal the legislation because they will not want to endure being thrashed for their stupid position of the issue for another seven years. Any one who looks back on the this part of our political history must surely recognize that the whole problem is a consequence of the Labor party making a bad call and then being political cowards unwilling to undo their mistake or even admit that it was a mistake. All because the Labor party have been trying to court the very loopy left who support the Greens position on the Asylum seeker issues. That sort of thinking from the ALP is of course rather mad because there is no way that a sensible ALP person can possibly sink deep enough into the slime of Green political idea without alienating their center.
The thing that we should always remember is that the measure of the ALP’s position on any issue where it is at odds with the current government is not the posturings of Electricity Bill Shorten and his motley crew but their answer to being asked “will you repeal it if you win office?” and my guess is that The ALP answer will almost without exception fudge it and make excuses and prevaricate because the last thing that they want to do is commit themselves to giving the public a very spiky stick to beat them with for the next seven years.
Fortunately the Rudd asylum seeker dance is now, finally ending
The implosion that we just had to have or will the rise of Lambie be worth the fall of Palmer
I don’t know if readers have noticed but I have not been feeling the blogging muse much lately. Its probably a combination of my health issues, a couple of domestic issues and just feeling rather uninspired by current events. That said though the news reports suggesting that Clive Palmer’s eponymous party is getting close to imploding has brightened me up no end. You really know that its over when Palmer starts sprouting conspiracy theories
Palmer told ABC radio Lambie was sent to “infiltrate” the PUP, a claim Lambie has shrugged off.
“When you start a new party like our party, the established parties and others try to wreck it,” Palmer said. “She’s been sent in there by someone to cause trouble and I think that’s the reality of it.
“You’ve only got to look at what happened to all the other parties, the tactics that were used to discredit them … and there’s no reason to think that wouldn’t happen to our party,” he said.
Palmer went on to reiterate his concerns on Channel Seven on Monday morning, accusing the senator of being “controlled by lobbyists” and seeking to “blackmail the government”.
But it gets better (well in soap opera terms it does) with the scuttle butt being pushed by the Guardian now claiming that Lambieis not only about to leave Palmer but will be forming her own party as well:
Just back to Jacqui Lambie briefly to outline the events of the weekend, just in case you were having a life. Lambie was in Tassie consulting with her voters, supporters and mentors, including an unnamed large poppy grower on what to do about her predicament.
Clive Palmer was getting more and more frustrated that he could not control Lambie. By last night, as Lambie was flying in, Palmer put out a statement raising allegations that Lambie had accepted disability payments at the same time she was on a fulltime salary for Palmer United.
Furthermore, Palmer alleges that in January 2014, before she started in the senate but while she was a paid member of PUP, Lambie supported the establishment of an Australian Defence Veterans Party (Lambie Party). He accused Lambie of acting dishonestly, lying about him and using veterans to increase her public standing without acting on their behalf.
Having a person of questionable honesty who had previously been charged and convicted by the Australian Army has been a disappointment for the Palmer United Party. Senator Lambie never declared her convictions prior to her endorsement for the Palmer United Party.
Lambie’s chief of staff Rob Messenger said Camp Jacqui will be putting out an “in-depth” statement later today.
Schadenfreude does not quite do it as a descriptor but further to that I can’t I can’t help but thinking that this whole kit and caboodle is a wake up call to our polity that should be reminding us that the way that our Senate is elected needs reform.
Stay tuned because the road is getting bumpy and the seat-belts have been removed…
The only question that we have to consider is will the rise of Lambie be worth the fall of Palmer
Cheers Comrade
Chariots of the Dogs
Brendan O’Neill on the new totalitarians, now policing even our private thoughts and word games
Hat tip to Andrew Bolt on this one:
Brendan O’Neill on the new totalitarians, now policing even our private thoughts and word games:
WHY is it bad to hack and expose photographs of a woman’s naked body but apparently OK to steal and make public the contents of a man’s soul?
This is the question that should burn in our minds in the wake of the Barry Spurr scandal.
For just a few weeks ago, when a hacker invaded the iCloud accounts of female celebs and rifled through their intimate snaps, there was global outrage… To peer into a woman’s most intimate moments was a “sexual violation”, said a writer for Guardian Australia…
Fast forward to last week, and some of the same people whose jaws hit the floor at the audacity of those who leaked these women’s private, unguarded pics were cheering the hacking of Spurr’s private, unguarded words.
Spurr, a professor of poetry at the University of Sydney, has had his private emails pored over and published by pseudo-radical, eco-miserabilist website New Matilda. In some of his emails, in what he has since claimed was a cheeky competition between him and his friends to see who could be the least PC, Spurr used words that would no doubt cause pinot gris to be spilled if they were uttered at a dinner party.
He described Tony Abbott as an “Abo lover”, referred to a woman as a “harlot”, called Nelson Mandela a “darky”, and used “Mussies” for Muslims and “chinky-poos” for Chinese. He now has been suspended by the university.
Many people will wince on reading those words. Just as we will have winced if we happened upon those photos of well-known women doing porno poses or engaging in shocking sex talk in videos shot by their boyfriends.
And that’s because these behaviours, both Spurr’s knowingly outrageous banter and the actresses’ knowingly sluttish poses, share something important in common: they were private acts, not intended for public consumption. They were things done or said between intimates, far from the eyes and ears of respectable society. Yet where right-on commentators and tweeters stood up for the right of famous women not to have their private nakedness splashed across the internet, they have relished in the exposure of Spurr’s soul to the panting, outraged mob.
A most worthy argument from one of the lefties I truly respect.
Cheers Comrades
Brendan O’Neill
Vale Edward Gough Whitlam, Its time! for the big election in the sky
I met Gough once, shook his hand even, when I was a callow youth an in awe of those playing the game of politics, heck I even voted for the ALP in 1972 and in 1975 and during those years I loved listening to parliament on the radio where his dulcet tones and oratory cemented my love of our democracy. My politics have changed somewhat since then but you never lose the affection you feel for your first political love even when it has become clear that their feet were very much made of clay.
Gough certainly deserves respect for leading Labor out of the political wilderness in 1972 but he also deserves the critiques of his administrative failings and economic mismanagement he will undoubtedly be greatly deified in the next few days which is fine for a long life spendt serving the nation but lets just never forget that a good emperor knows to listen when the dedicated slave reminds him “that you are only a man, not a god” those who admired him need to remember that as well.
With respect comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 