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FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIrst!
Next.
G’devening.
If anyone thinks s/he knows the meaning of life, I’d be glad to hear their views.
Pavlov’s @ [4]
Look, the folk down at the Lab have given this quite a bit of thought, and put out a position paper, now available in paperback, ummmm I think they called it “The New Testament”, oh no, hang on “The Koran”, ummmm no, was it “The Analects”? or, let me see now, it might have been “The Bhagavad Gita”?? I tell a lie, it was “Les Pensees”. No, hang on a mo’, errr “The Life of Brian” - that’s it, on DVD, see esp the scene where Brian proclaims to the adoring persons “you don’t need to follow me!” and esp his Mum’s rather tart remarks about his being “just a very naughty boy” and “not the Messiah”.
Shorter Lab report: your guess is as good as ours, PC.
You’ve just got to see the sneezing baby panda.
[link]
“If anyone thinks s/he knows the meaning of life, I’d be glad to hear their views.”
For some randy bastards in Indonesia, the meaning of life lies in finding the correct combination to a therapist’s meat-safe.
[link]
For others, it’s true love. Many happy returns to the Possums, childhood sweethearts who are getting married in Brissie today.
[link]
The meaning of life? Pythons, Galactic hitchhikers and “square cut or pear shape” (& the bloke who buys ‘em) do it for me.
@ndy from Slackbastard has suspended his blog due to cease-and-desist letters alleging defamatory material. He tells his side of the story over at his back-up blog, the original Slackbastard blog on Blogger.
ao - more and more and more speech, I reckon.
Nelson: “I’m going nowhere”. ABC News
Sam — oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It’s as though some malign fairy was at his christening and put a curse on his way with words.
“It’s as though some malign fairy was at his christening and put a curse on his way with words.”
At that stage, P.C., Dolly would have been but seven or eight.
Well. if that’s the case tonight I’ll leave it out some milk and cake.
cheers tigtog.
this post:
[link]
provides a little more background regarding possible motivations for the c+d; which, as suggested on stormfront.org, is being credited to local (sydney) fascist groupuscule the ‘new right’ aka the ‘national anarchists’ (deets about which are contained in the above, but which you may remember from such protests as apec in sydney). there’s also a little more disco on sydney indymedia:
[link]
also:
[link]
[link]
– which is the forum of a us-based anti-racist network, ‘one people’s project’.
et cetera.
(and there will be further elsewhere in the coming wk.)
basically, i would like the story to be spread as far and as wide as possible.
lastly, my blog will be back up — no data has been lost, which is lucky, as i’ve made well over 1,000 posts! — at another location in the coming wk (fingers xed).
cheers!
ps. remember buchenwald: liberated on april 11, 1945.
Link
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody…
The new Governor-General is Ms Quentin Bryce.
Zarquon
Much and all as I am a bananabender and a female, this doesn’t augur well for interState relations!
Can’t access the New, Improved Thursday Thread on this topic but this little corker is too good to waste.
[link]
Dammit, now I want a MacSkull Pro.
Kewl.
Queensland - there with the progressivism before the rest of the country yet again!
Mark - would that be the progressivism that has SA appointing two female governors before Queensland gets around to appointing its first?
More to the point, Bryce’s cv is impressive, but I have heard very little of her (a plus in any vice-regal appointment of course). Has she fulfilled the role of Qld Governor to expectation?
Being a tad facetious, TFA, but it honestly is a bit of a battle to get people to realise that Queensland under a Labor gov’t is a progressive place. I think we’re still ahead of SA in the female premier stakes!
No one has a bad word to say about her to be sure. Her work in anti-discrimination circles back in the day was also very highly regarded - particularly her ability to persuade otherwise resistant and conservative folks that equal opportunity was a *good thing*.
I’ve met her a few times. Sharp brain, wicked shoes.
Mark, I’ll grant you that SA hasn’t done so well on the Premier stakes, with no clear contenders on the horizon that I can see. I’d argue this is due to complacency stemming from SA being the first Australian state to grant women the right to vote…
I must say that, having grown up in Adelaide during the Dunstan years, I cannot bring myself to think of any recent Labor governments as being progressive.
Now that is impressive - bodes well IMO.
I thought better of it, THA, and suspected I should have said our government reflects the innate Queensland progressivism that has now re-emerged - remembering that we actually went down the track to the socialisation of industry under the Labor governments of the 10s and 20s, abolished the squattocracy’s Red Chamber in 22, had the first ever general strike in an industrialised country in 1912, etc, etc.
Though from everything I can glean, our Labor government is a lot more progressive than Rann’s administration - which in any case isn’t even a pure Labor government - what with a Nat in the Cabinet…
Thanks Sublime Cowgirl - a lot of content in those few words. And I guess style matters when one is GG.
Mark - now you are delving into aspects of Qld political history about which I know nothing.
As for Rann, his govt has certainly portrayed a conservative image, and generally been a disappointment. On the other hand, he has also been politically astute; appointing former Nat Maywald to cabinet was an innovative move that has been very successful. It allowed him to form government while also gaining a very capable minister who had the courage to take on an extremely difficult portfolio. And SA Nats seem rather distantly related to Qld Nats, ideologically speaking.
I don’t think the Rann govt has been appreciably more conservative than the Beattie govts, and it hasn’t been handicapped by the same levels of scandal and ministerial ineptitude. I’m a bit out of touch with recent events in Qld, so I don’t think I could make a comparison with Bligh.
The Feral Abacus:
Have you been away? Haven’t seen much of you lately.
Mark [22]:
Nice to see an outstanding Queenslander, Quentin Bryce, go higher. Feel she will be a more proactive, more courageous, somewhat wiser and a far better Governor-General than the incumbent.
Next time, let’s have an outstanding Aborigine lady as our G-G/President/Head-Of-State. In fact, let’s change the rules so that whoever is appointed [and NEVER elected!!] to that position is “…. a person who has at least one ancestor born in Australia prior to 1788″. Why not? What harm would that do?
[link]
SMAGE this morning. Wilful incompetence and a frenzied mania by the AFP in ignoring (forget “appear to have ignored”) any evidence that exonerated Haneef. Really really sick, the ultimate policeman’s tautology can be deemed to apply:
I am disgusted at this news report and hope that Haneef’s lawyers really consider a civil action (against Keelty and any other fuckwits involved who ignored that evidence) for…malicious prosecution.
TFA, it’s pretty hard to judge these things at a distance. However areas where the Beattie/Bligh governments have been good value include:
(1) Raising the school leaving age to 17; unless 16-17 yr olds are in employment or training;
(2) The establishment of dedicated academies for particular industries in high schools - ie Qld Creative Academies and Aviation High;
(3) Native title and employment initiatives in Weipa;
(4) Liberalising the legalised prostitution laws;
(5) The effective decriminalisation of marijuana use;
(6) Restorative justice inc. Murri and drug courts;
(7) Affirmative action in judicial appointments;
(8) An economic development strategy based on the identification of emergent strengths such as Biotech and CI so we don’t just rely on mining income;
(9) Provisions for the compulsory inclusion of public housing in new developments;
(10) Robust pay equity laws.
I could go on - that’s 10 off the top of my head. They have had the odd ministerial scandal and the quality of Ministers generally is average, and service delivery - particularly in health - remains a big problem.
Peter Kemp,
Surprising how our coppers always live up (or down?) to our expectations isn’t it.
Good news, everyone, on the new GG. Sounds like she’ll be apples.
Just when I was really digging the the Rudd government- this nonsense. [link]
particularly disappointed about teh lamearsed recourse to “national security”. Im sorry, what possible quals does my employer have in the area?
Answer: none, and you know it, JG.
If this was true, wouldn’t we be allowing, like, ASIO to monitor them instead? Of course, its not like ASIO has particularly good national security quals either
- but you get my point.
Hopeless rubbish, Gillard. Pick up your act.
I’ve put up a specific thread about Quentin Bryce’s appointment for further discussion - since it seems to have strayed across onto two existing threads:
[link]
“Hopeless rubbish, Gillard. Pick up your act.”
Yep, Lefty E, it is a bloody disgrace.
Let us just hope this mad idea is taken on big time, by the unions. I doubt there will be much interest by the media. It is as if every moment, on the job, is owned by the boss and government. The policy is completely degrading of the individuals’ privacy rights.
Lefty E,
I know I’ve got a new Windows 2000 computer, but I didn’t realise it was that bloody good that Osama Ben Laden could jump out of the screen waving a scimitar and threatening to slice me into pieces. (Though I did hear he has a flying carpet). If terrorists are this dangerous by way of e-mail Telstra needs a better spam/virus filter.
Though most of you probably already knew that.
Very seriously, its an absolutely outrageous and unnecessary invasion of civil liberties and personal liberty from the Party who brought you the Australia card.Seems like they’re at it again.
We’ll fight them and win on this one, chaps. Cant see the ACTU rolling on this garbage.
Especially as the Kandrews style case put is so laughable - she cant seriously be trying to get it up with this half-ar*sed pitch? I’m sorry, what friggin use is my dimwit employer going to be in the WOT? Hmm?
This policy has “file under regrettable brainfart” written all over it.
This article struck me as quite strange.. Email scanning/filtering and the logging of internet use are pretty much standard in most medium to large organisations. There’s always been the provision to have staff agree to it, but all those agreements are a one way street. If you didn’t accept it, you wouldn’t get internet access.
I think there will be a rider in the legislation to give the govt access to the information in a trivial manner. They’ll use the terrorist angle be able to grab all the information without having to prove any kind of offence first.
But what will they do to this information oif a trivial manner? That’s what bothers me. I had hoped the new ALP would rescind the more egregious of Howard’s 1984 laws. Fat chance.
Yeah and neither Obama nor Hillary look like trashing the Patriot Act. Oh wait they voted for it didn’t they?
Graham Bell [28] - No, I haven’t been away, but what with other pressing commitments I’m mostly lurking these days. And I don’t feel the same level of motivation now that Howard has gone.
Mark [31] That’s an impressive list and evidence of a government with a well-defined agenda, and I’ve often wondered just what Beattie might have achieved if he’d had the support of a more talented Cabinet. However, some of your points appear to be more a matter of Qld catching up with the other states.
Among my disappointments in recent SA govts, the effective recriminalisation of marijuana use and the quite dramatic drop in secondary retention rates stand out. And then there was the dodgy Olsen government - described by one print journalist as ‘the most corrupt in living memory’.
But “… the odd ministerial scandal…” seems rather an understatement; it’s hardly the norm to have a sacked minister attempting to blackmail the Premier, or for a minister to physically assault senior public servants - tempting as that could conceivably be. Perhaps its a matter of public perception and expectation after the appalling standards that applied during the Joh years. But then it seems to me that state ministerial quality has been in decline nationally for many years.
That’s undoubtedly true, TFA, but maybe a fair bit of it is due to the fact that so much of the action policy-wise is now in the federal sphere?
Also, Qld had a fair bit of catching up to do after 32 years of the Nationals.
Hi Kim. Yes, the federal-state divide is quite likely part of the story. But my gut feeling is that there is a chicken & egg aspect to that; specifically, has policy action shifted from state to federal spheres because state govts were under-performers?
In any case, recent federal cabinets have been of rather pedestrian quality. Some competent people and a good few muddlers.
have spent the week in melbourne, and have to say - sydney and ‘inappropriate development’ are totally interchangeable.
melbourne folk have pointed out a few medium density developments blah, since i was living here and i hadn’t been back for 8 years, but gads, it’s still so pristine, and of human scale, and the traffic is so not heavy compared to, and the attention to detail, in terms of the streetscapes in the city and inner-city, is almost un-australian.
am currently sitting in a 24 hour internet cafe on lonsdale street.
& got to met some local LP crew tonight at the forum in carlton, which was way better than watching underbelly at home in sydney. (it’s shite, but it’s our shite)
best scamper back to the hotel, my daughter is being passed from a number 1 or number 8 tram at 8.30am on swanston st.
and the train down, never gets any better, in case anyone was foolish enough to book a seat. but was fairly salutary to gaze for 11 hours at 800klms or so, of dusty, denuded, destocked paddocks, and bum-out-of-pants homesteads and villages.
And speaking of cities and the landscapes and development of cities, have any of you Brisvegas types read Simon Cleary’s novel The Comfort of Figs? It’s all about the building of the Story Bridge, among other things.
(Though if you only ever read one Brisbane book in your life, the collection of Gwen Harwood’s wartime letters, Blessed City, is still at the top of my list.)
I’ve been meaning to, Dr Cat, mainly because I heard Matt Condon saying good things about it. What do you reckon?
I remember Simon from the law-studyin’ days at UQ. Very nice bloke. He briefly ran short story reading groups in New Farm in the mid 90s - I attended one and read some Irvine Welsh in bad Scottish brogue. Offended a Christian present and haven;’t seen him since.
I look forward to reading his book.
Would I have come across him at Uni, do you reckon, Lefty E, or was he just in the law student crew?
What is it about the acceptance of extreme violence on the footy field by the law, sports commentators and many Australians?
Barry Hall, AFL footballer, received a seven week ‘off the field sentence’ for punching someone in blatant view of a camera. I just do not understand why the bloke has not been charged with common assault when the case should be open and shut.
We are surely looking at large double standards here.
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Id wager not, Mark - knew him through law only, rather than student left circles etc.
I used to go to a few of the UQLS pool parties, Lefty E!
Indeed..
Actually, Im pretty sure we first met in that rather short window in which YOU were a law student.
We probably did! That lasted until May of first year!
But I took up the habit of attending UQLS functions again later on when I was involved with the Clubs & Socs committee, and of course, there was lots of overlap between Arts and Law students anyway.
The Cleary book has its problems as a novel, IMHO, but I should think it’d still be an engrossing and enjoyable read for people who live in Brisbane and are interested in its cityscape and history. I wish someone would do something like that for Adders — the only truly wonderful book about Adelaide that I can think of is Barbara Hanrahan’s The Scent of Eucalyptus, and that’s not a novel.
Thanks, Dr Cat. As you no doubt know, Brisbane has actually been fairly fertile territory for fictional representation - not just the usual suspects such as Malouf (and there’s good reason why he’s one of them!), but also a whole range of other authors - many of whom - like Vance Palmer - probably aren’t much read these days. I’ve had it in mind for a while to write an article about this - and I’ll add Cleary to the pile of source materials!
Mark, I’m sure you know Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River but have you read her earlier novel The Commandant about Patrick Logan and the Moreton Bay penal settlement? That’s a superb little novel — small but perfectly formed, so to speak.
Don’t forget Gerard Lee’s much neglected ‘True Love and How to Get It’ (circa 81), when you do, Mark.
Both are in my pile, folks, thanks!
Unfortunately, I’ve not had the time to read all the novels I identified - I basically went through Patrick Buckridge and Belinda McKay’s edited collection By the book (literary history of qld that came out last year) and some other academic sources, made a list, and hit the second hand shops!
It’s a post PhD project.
Good tip, Pav - I’ll get that one!
Brisvegans, when you are at the heart of the mall, there is an arcade on Queen St (the side closer to King George Square), right near the corner of Albert (high side), which used to lead to Jojos.
Bear in mind that right there, in the 1820s, was the flogging pole, and beside it, a row of semi-submerged single isolation cells, in the hardest penal colony in all NSW.
Not just that, Lefty E, but the laneway that abits it was also the scene of some of the worst police violence in 1978 on one of the right to march demos.
Tonight’s Lateline on the ABC had a story re indigenous education in the NT. Two interesting points- see the feds have intervened indigenous school attendance has increased by 20-30% On the downside, however, up to 80% of kids in remote indigenous NT schools have hearing loss and these schools have insufficient resources which makes effective teaching almost impossible given the health, family dysfunction and language issues impacting the children.
What should be the first priority- helping these desperately disadvantaged kids or ensuring Aunty Beryl gets a subsidised ticket to a local theatre production. Call me an old fashioned lefty if you will, but I’ll always put the kids before the arts luvvies. Aunty Beryl can bloody well make do with an amateur production!
You really haven’t got a clue, have you.
In his grave, William Morris is lining up to plaster you. Or wallpaper you. Or something.
In other “luvvie” news, JG has gone native over at his new digs at Catallaxy. Rethinking his view of Michael Costa now that he learns the NSW Treasurer is a fan of Hayek:
[link]
Doesn’t seem to have occurred to the assembled libertariat that being a fool and a woeful policy maker is a bad thing. It’s the symbolism that counts. Friedman! Hayek!
“You really haven’t got a clue, have you.”
If Aunty Beryl’s favoured art form suckles on the public teat, Aunty Beryl’s ticket is effectively subsidised. And- as Mr Friedman correctly noted- there is no such thing as a free lunch: the arts only get publicly funded if money is coerced out of the pocket of taxpayers.
And who exactly, John, is this Aunty Beryl of whom you speak? Is this perchance a bit of ageist, sexist stereotyping?
Among many other things, just to address your wildly simplistic false-dichotomy model for a minute, arts funding goes to plays, books and songs that raise awareness that increases pressure on politicians to address the problems of Aboriginal people (I would give you a list of titles if I thought you would recognise them), plus of course directly to Aboriginal artists themselves, as funding support for one of the few activities that have made life better for indigenous people in this country over the last few decades.
Swings and roundabouts; there are many things I deplore seeing my tax dollars being spent on, too. Seeing said dollars also being spent on things I value, like arts funding and Aboriginal health and education, is the tradeoff. Surely that’s how being a democratic taxpaying citizen works.
Yaeh, John. Try Jack Davis’s No Sugar for starters.(It’s a play.)
On another topic - I’m addicted to Underbelly, so on stayed on 9 to watch Canal Road. IMHO, it was crap.
The meeting of Pope Benny and George W. Bush is a truly epochal event.
It represents an encounter between someone who is infallible and someone who never gets anything right.
PC,
I think you’re the one who’s stereotyping. I have nothing but respect and affection for my Aunty Beryl.
The circus acts you speak of are generally preaching to the converted. Face the facts- you’re just another greedy snout in the trough and you crowd out worthier causes like indigenous education and health.. While you have a democratic right to gluttony I have a democratic right to bitch about!
Yay, let’s get rid of defence spending too. It’s crowding out all the worthier causes.
And sport! Let’s get rid of all the spending on sport!
Really?
Disclosure: I’ve benefited from arts funding precisely once, ten years ago, just in case anyone thinks John form “Arkansaw” has a clue what he’s talking about.
BBC Subeditors FTW:
New EU rules have clairvoyants worried about the future
“And sport! Let’s get rid of all the spending on sport!”
I agree! At last the penny drops!
However I also think both sport and the arts are good for kids and should be a part of state primary and secondary education. In my secondary school, although music was a compulsory subject in years 7 thru 9 the school didn’t have a single musical instrument. I very much regret that and have my own kids in music lessons.
BTW- I was born in the town of Arkansaw so quit the smarty pants nonsense please.
Yer, Zarquon@73, i had a feeling that was coming. It is dividing the whole psychic industry.
Can we just hope The Spiritual Workers Association get to strike a happy medium?
(Ok , it’s bad, but i can never resist a “strike a happy medium” ,so called joke, opportunity)
j of A - I believe the good Lady Cat may be unacquainted with Wisconsin’s premier contribution to the field of geographico-lexical confusion.
But you can pry my smarty-pants nonsense out of my cold dead hands.
“BTW- I was born in the town of Arkansaw so quit the smarty pants nonsense please.”
Oops, my sincere apologies, john of A.
Just goes to show, ya learn something new every day.
So what would you do when one of your kids want to be a classical musician and there isn’t any orchestras in Australia? What do you tell him or her?
Learn the fucking guitar, you young fogey!
Fine,
Go overseas?
“Oops, my sincere apologies, john of A.”
You are a gracious man, JPZ. Cheers!
Correct, and you’d think someone born in a place called Curramulka would have thought twice about the smarty-pants nonsense, so I too beg your pardon, John of A.
(I still think you’re wrong about arts funding though.
)