Your interpretation of his “rage” comment is much funnier anyway.

Generally, I think politicians do a very poor job in this country actually leading. They do a lot of consulting, though. For the most part, the populace aren’t subject matter experts. What we need from politicians is better explanation and support building.

If it’s an allusion to Dylan Thomas, he’s asking the party to show some little bit of spark before it dies.

In people unaware of the Thomas reference, it’ll spark Smashing Pumpkins images (e.g. Paul Norton above), or Rage Against The Machine, especially “Killing in the Name”:
“F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me”

Cheers
Chris

“… let me say that in the difficult challenge of leading the Opposition in 2008, you have my total support and commitment.”

The cricket analogy is actually quite amusing if you think it through fully …

Today, Greg Sheridan continues his personal campaign to convince the Japanese that Kevin Rudd rooly rooly hates them (when is DFAT going to have a quiet calming chat with this peculiar little man?)

And say what, grace? Why not just build a relationship with the Japanese and Indians that makes the man a laughing stock? That’s how Labor governments deal with conservative opponents - they ignore them, leaving them to become increasingly shrill and drown in their own piss irrelevance.

I would argue why those policies of people like Friedmann never get implemented…

I would argue that the reason is that they’re total bullshit - impossible to replicate in the real world - based on a raft of naive and blind assumptions about ‘rationality’ - but even if they were, the most cogent examples of free markets are horrifying compared to the slow and steady statism of the western world (Russia, anyone? How about Gambon, whoopee!).

But I digress. I tend to agree, political journalists need to do their jobs, which few do, left or right, but we keep buying papers…

Florence Howarth: I think JHo meant “rage” against the very fact of being IN OPPOSITION, as a spur to getting them out of THAT poo-poos, back into government.

I think he wants his Party to show some spirit, resolve, flair, nous, thought, action and to develop a PLAN pretty damn soon.

cheerio

This is not surpirsing, all things considerd.

The problem as I see it is that the boosters for people like Friedmann never implement his ideas.

Friedman’s ideas were implemented in Allende’s Chile, along with the activities of the Villa Grimaldi

Friedman later noted the coincidence between the reputed success of his economic policies and the screams emanating from various annexes in the grounds of the Villa Grimaldi, paraphrasing Stalin’s observations upon omelette-making.

Winners make omelettes. Losers commit crimes against humanity.

I would argue why those policies of people like Friedmann never get implemented as designed is because of the very nature of government and politics. To a certain extent, any ideological policy idea ends up somewhat resembling the fish from “The Old Man and the Sea” when put through the process of government, and when someone comes up with a system of government that avoids this while properly representing the people, then let me know.

In the meantime, we may have to settle for pleasing most of the people most of the time, and getting most of the policy most of the time.

The MSM now seems to believe that its principal function in reporting the news is to report what politicians have said. How many times does an interview consist mainly of requests for comment on what someone else has said about an issues, with the answers being used to inspire more questions to other politicians and so on.

Heard it myself this morning on PNN: dill of a reporter asking Wayne Swan What He Thought (TM) about the Petrol Pricing guy’s comments on Coles Express. Swan responded that they were doing their job. Reporter: “But What Would You Say (TM) to Coles?” Gah! I want my 8c back.

Lots of commentators then comment on whether it is a smart or dumb strategy that is or isn’t working, and suggest other narratives they think are cleverer.

Meanwhile reality plods along mostly elsewhere, with most of the facts that are either inconvenient or not exciting enough being routinely ignored.

I don’t think it’s fair to single out the Libs for this sort of thing - their narrative may be less credible than others (which isn’t surprising given they’re having to adjust to that whole Opposition thing), but that doesn’t mean Labor’s is the pinnacle of intellectual rigour. Look at the nonsense they’ve got away with about ‘abolishing’ Workchoices when they mostly won’t even reverse the laws to 2004 Howard IR laws - great mantra which clearly has worked politically and become received ‘truth’, but intellectually its no more honest than the stuff from the other side.

BTW, I’m not saying that all politicians or commentators pay no attention to genuine intellectually honest and rigorous debate - plenty of them do, but these days it’s not really the main job of a political party and particularly their leaders - at least in the day to day public domain, which is what is being reacted to here.

And to discount economics is disingenuous. Not only do you discount the right-wing experts in the field (Milton Friedmann), but you also discount the fact that without robust economic policy of either colour, none of us would eat.

The problem as I see it is that the boosters for people like Friedmann never implement his ideas. What are they afraid of if he’s so correct? De-regulation of things like banking have proved to be a disaster for everybody but bankers. Social safety nets are apparently evil but corporate safety nets are A-OK. We handed a bunch of risk management off to the corporate sector on the promise they’d be more efficient but the only thing that happened was we found out they couldn’t price risk. We swapped pensions for super, health care for health insurance and protected markets for globalised ones on the understanding that we’d all be better off. Only it didn’t happen - there are a few people stupendously better off financially and the rest of us got fobbed off with $40 dvd players in place of job security. Not much of a bargain.

The global warming argument against conservatives is only half right: regardless of whether the planet is warming or not, oil and coal are going to run out, so we need to replace them. We should all arrive at the same place. Conservatives need to reframe the argument from one of warming to one of resources.

Why on Earth would Australia abandon a multi-lateral defence forum with the US, India and Japan other than to appease China? Can’t we keep China happy without turning our back on our democratic friends and allies?

And to discount economics is disingenuous. Not only do you discount the right-wing experts in the field (Milton Friedmann), but you also discount the fact that without robust economic policy of either colour, none of us would eat.

Today, Greg Sheridan continues his personal campaign to convince the Japanese that Kevin Rudd rooly rooly hates them (when is DFAT going to have a quiet calming chat with this peculiar little man?):
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gregsheridan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/how_to_lose_friends/

And Paul Toohey continues his personal campaign to get rid of those pesky aboriginal land permits that are interfering with his right to go anywhere he pleases (someone tell the poor bloke he’s lost the argument):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662835-5013871,00.html

I know Murdoch is teh evil and so on, but why people think the Fairfax rags are shiny happy excellent journalism is beyond me. With the exception of the Fin, they’re in a period of very steep decline. Whoring for advertising cash seems to be their only function these days.