Further to Matt's contribution below I heard "debate" in the Senate yesterday while driving home from Balnarring. We are being told that black is white and white is black on a daily basis from the lying and rapacious crowd currently in power. Even the Newspoll puts them behind currently and that's before they have done some of the more extreme things they have promised their paymasters (the coal and other mining companies).
While the rest of the world takes on the cigarette and tobacco companies we are the only country in the world to have repealed carbon abatement laws. Not content with that the "government" is trying to get rid of those bodies that were attracting investment into renewables and doing it at no cost to the taxpayer. Free market economics? The appalling Greg Hunt can't hide behind ignorance of the truth - Greg read your thesis and maybe you will remember. In any case in this democracy we can make our displeasure know to him at the ballot box. That boyish cheesy grin won't help him then.
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I’m a rare breed. Right now, I’m listening to Parliament. Not many people do. It’s one of those odd sports I partake in, information before opinion. Even if I don’t like it. The information, or the sport - petty people lying at and badgering each other. Self-serving grandstanding, blatant manipulations – of truths, of facts, of the press and people.
It fires me up. Agreeing or disagreeing, it helps sharpen my opinions. Thirty minutes usually does me. An hour, tops. After that I get too angry. If I had my way, I’d inject everybody in the room, lower and upper house, square between the eyes with truth serum, ditch the Dorothys and give the Speaker a gun for interjectors. That’s the worst of it. The constant, petty yammering from the other side. The total lack of respect. Give good, get good, why should I then offer them any of mine? Of this batch, one thing’s becoming clear - the latest mob in power are lying, almost about everything, and was always going to, because they always were to begin with. And everybody knows it. And everybody knew. Just like they knew children were not really being thrown overboard on the Tamper. Just like they knew there weren’t really any weapons of mass destruction. That’s what gets me. They knew. The people. Us. I don’t blame Tony Abbott, we knew what we were getting. Sleazy little men and woman will always strive for power. It’s our job to listen or not. It’s our role to elect or dismiss them. Everybody knew Gillard and Swan ran one of the best economies in the world, but they hated Julia. Yes, the Press told them too, in the most disgusting, irresponsible, undemocratic ways. But very few people were swayed by the Press. All it did was let them voice their spite. It backed-up already existing prejudices. It never told them to hate, it said “It’s okay that you hate.” When John Howard first came to power I loathed him and the backward path to racist, self-centered 50s ideology he was dragging us down to. Then he got elected again, then again. By the forth time I stopped blaming him. I blamed us. All of us. He wasn’t forcing us into such a world view, he was reflecting what we are. His face was reflecting us. We ARE a racist country. We WOULD rather eject a popular Prime Minster for daring to take on filthy rich miners in the name of working class people. We LOVE those vile, greedy magnates ahead of our own. We ARE subservient. I’m talking about responsibility. Responsibility and leadership. As a nation, Abbott is all our fault. Popular opinion is petty, fickle. We’re children. If it was left to the public we would have voted against the vote for women, indigenous citizenship, against entering WW1, America would never have freed the slaves, we never would have modernised our economy or forged ties with Asia. We would still be living under White Australia. But each of these times, there came a time. There came a leader. As a nation, we have not had a leader for the longest time, not since Paul Keating, because we keep demanding politicians. As a nation, we know it. If someone dares to lead, like Rudd did on the mining issue, we knee-cap them. Until we create the room and platform, the ear, for another leader, morally, spiritually, we’ll keep spiralling downward, to the bottom of the barrel. I don’t blame Tony. He’s our fault. Just another little man. What we need is some grass roots leadership. While we are going backwards here and the awful Greg Hunt in the service of the even more dreadful Tony Abbott think that their turinig back the clock on climate change has some validity check out this piece pointed to by cousin Larry from the New York Times. You see Greg and Tony this is not a fight between the political parties for power - it is an urgent call to action for all of us.
Yesterday between twenty five and thirty thousand people of all ages gathered in Treasury Gardens to express their dismay over the changes to the arrangements on carbon pricing. Not that you would know about this from reading one of our increasingly irrelevant print media - the Age had the (Age sponsored) fun run on their front cover and the Murdoch rubbish had a small item about a small crowd in Sydney braving the rain to demonstrate their support.
Tim Flannery, Adam Bandt and Greg Butler spoke - the evil Greg Hunt was invited but declined to appear. The attack dog Pyne just moments ago gagged debate in the House on the issue. This is the democracy we now have and deserve having elected this mob. I don't know personally anybody ho admits to voting for them but I wouldn't. It still is a terrible indictment of our media when no mention is made of something so important and made much of all around the country by so many. STOP buying or reading their propaganda. Don't give them the oxygen. Let's work together to make them just an aberration, a footnote in our history That superannuated and self confident ex PM of Australia, John Howard, has been lecturing the British, straight out of the Merchants of Doubt handbook. It seems yhat even though he went to the 2007 election with a carbon trading scheme this was because of pressure from the electorate and no because he believed in it. Now he can reveal that Tonee Abbot won the last election in part because of his fervent denial of global warming. Let's hope that those two rats are the first to drown when the seas rise.
To add to the irritation I saw Smokin' Joe Hockey on 7:30 report last night looking confident and friendly as he insisted that with repeal of the carbon pricing mechanism there would be an instant 9% drop in electricity prices. If that were to happen it might point to a massive conspiracy between electricity generator/distributors and the then opposition. The electricity crowd meanwhile came out publicly and said it was more complicated then the repeal issue and it would take some time o flow through. Minister for telling lies and the Environment the awful and light weight Greg Hunt appears on tv every night seeming reasonable and unburdened by the facts about anything and smiles into camera and reassures us that the green lobby "lies" are jut that, so don't you worry your pretty little head about it. David Suzuki was a light breeze that offered relief from the relentless bad news when appearing on Q&A last night. Even the normally odious Tony Jones almost behaved well. With an audience that included some prominent climate deniers the @show@ reminded me of the awful shift that has occurred from current affairs and news as investigations and reporting of facts to what we now have where anybodies loony views carry weight particularly if they also bring ratings. News is entertainment.
Then on Lateline there was the Liberal Minister for the Environment, the softly spoken terribly reasonable liar Greg Hunt, who pretended to not be concerned about the Climate Commission's announcement that even though thios joke government had wound it up that they would continue their work anyway. Take that Greg and Tonee. You thought it would be simple to get rid of the people who told all of us what is really going on. Good on you Tim Flannery and your mob. Suzuki said on Lateling @get off your arses and work for the next two and ah= half years to get rid of this mob@ meaning the government. Do we have to wait that long? No not Milan Kundera's early novel about communism in his home country of Czechoslovakia country but yesterday Tony Abbott after three years of poisonous politics and venomous character assassinations told us that he would respect everybody and expect the same. Who does he think he is kidding? Does he really believe that we have no memory and will wash the slate clean so that he can rape and pillage without a murmur? I don't think so.
Meanwhile it was interesting to hear Mark Latham interviewed today suggesting Mark Dreyfus as the new leader of the Parliamentary ALP. Not owned by anybody, honest, bright and capable, he is my choice as well. Now that Rudd has quit let us not have a business as usual choice of Shorten or Albanese but a complete break with the politics of yesterday. Don Clarke was born in Liverpool, England. He currently resides in NW England with his partner and laptop and various children and animals, and can often be found teaching computer literacy to the youth of Cheshire. Apart from his sci-fi novel Borrowed Time, he has self-published three music CDs with his band Yangtze, has recorded music for compilation CDs and BBC radio live sessions, and has self-published Pebbles, a book of poetry and lyrics. Mabinogion, his game of Welsh mythology, is self-published via the Gamecrafter in the USA. His recently published book "Borrowed Time" was an engrossing read, all 384 pages of it. It is a scifi adventure thriller with a bit of a game feel but don't let this capsule description put you off. It has a social consciousness and a strong emotional analysis and empathy of its characters but it is also a ripping yarn and a great read. You can get a copy from amazonuk - happy reading. As I slowly get used to the departure of Julia Gillard and some of her formidable team the notion that we will have an Abbott led government is making it's way up my spine and into my cerebellum. And it hurts.
What are the positives? Dangerously running on "trust me" it won't take three years not to trust the whole crew. Meanwhile Rudd may have ;lost his seat and the ALP will have the time to reorganize it's base and constitution to make itself more transparent, accessible and open to all comers that sign on to the Labor platform. All this has been in reports and recommendations to the Caucus over the years and was rehearsed in the report that John Faulkener did. Time on. Groups like Getup are focused n making sure that the LNP don't hold majorities in both houses and therefore making it impossible for them to repeal the swags of Ms Gillard's nation building over the past six years. It will also make it harder for an inexperienced, arrogant lot to ignore the advice of Treasury and take a wrecking ball to the best managed economy in the world. At the same time the contracts for the NBN will be costly to get out of as will the repealing of the clean energy targets and fund. Who are these people and how have they (appeared) to get some much support from our voters? Obviously having the daily support of 70% of our print media helps. Add in the almost universal absence of journalists in all media that ask tough but informed questions and you begin to see the difficulty that the Gillard-led government had in getting it's message heard. So we may be faced with a number of issues for the next three years. Reform of the only reforming party, a campaign to undermine the Murdoch Press and to hold the rest of the media to account in the way they say (and don't) hold the politicians to account. And finally take back to citizen's the power to deal with the important issues even when the pollies won't. We should look to the courts as a way of keeping them honest but more than this we should initiate more of our own direct action campaigns issue by issue. While the global warming deniers saddle up there are people working directly with industry to make their processes more efficient and save them money at the same time as reducing their carbon footprint. On a local level more people are growing their own food and joining buying co-ops that deliver locally grown, in-season, organic food. I am surprised by the number of people I know that have embraced a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle over the last twelve months. I am now a vegan and it has given me lower body weight, more strength and stamina and I sleep better. Dear Kevin
just so there is no doubt, which is a condition you would favour, tell us once and for all time that you or anybody associated with you, didn't leak or feed to the Press anything about Julia Gillard or the government she led and to put it totally in the past perhaps as a sign of good faith allow all journalists to state that they did/didn't have you as a source. Dear Tony there has been much speculation about dirty tricks in relation to Peter Slipper (Mal Brough) and Craig Thomson. Can you say that nobody on your side of politics had a hand in the development of these stories or indeed planted false information for political gain as a judge noted in the Slipper case. Looking forward to your answers # |