Category: Politics

Categories
Despair Politics UK

Britain Deserves Better

Ok, ok. It’s not as if the world really *needs* another hot politics take or anything and more to the point I doubt there’s anyone out there to even *read* this blog, gathering dust as it is in this neglected corner of the web, but apropos of nothing in particular and really just for my own benefit here, dear god it’s been depressing watching the absolute state of British politics unfold during this election campaign.

Not as depressing as the polling numbers, mind. Although maybe baffling would be a more appropriate word. How is it that even after everything, the Tories are still polling numbers that say “massive majority government”? Nine years of crippling austerity politics. Nine years of cuts to the NHS and other public services. Nine years of fit-for-work tests. Nine years of foodbanks (I mean, seriously, how does one of the world’s richest countries have millions of people reliant on foodbanks?)

Who exactly is it who looks at Boris Johnson — a man who has lied and schemed his way through his incredibly privileged life all the way to Downing Street, who has said and written awful racist and homophobic things, who isn’t even trusted by members of his own family, who disparages single mothers while simultaneously doing everything he can to personally create as many of them as possible — and thinks “yeah, that guy’s got my back”. The Queen-lying-to, take-your-pick-from-my-pro-and-anti-Brexit-articles, pointing-at-a-camera-crew-saying-there’s-no-press-here, 53-million-quid-garden-bridge-to-nowhere, reporters’-smartphone-stealing, lies-about-the-NHS-on-buses, american-tech-entrepreneur-funding, hiding-in-a-fridge guy.

Is it the fact that he’s going to “get Brexit done”? Well in one sense a Conservative majority likely means they *can* plough ahead with the hardest of Brexits, unburdened by a pesky democratically elected parliament applying oversight to the process (I mean wasn’t this whole thing supposed to be about parliamentary sovereignty anyway?) but if you really think Boris Johnson’s “Oven Ready Brexit” is going to be “done” in any meaningful way any time in the near future, then I’ve got this awesome bridge to sell you. Like most ready meals, it’s just crappy reheated leftovers that taste nothing like they were supposed to.

The withdrawal agreement is the *start* of the process, not the end. It took Canada 8 years to reach a FTA with the EU. There is zero chance one is completed by the end of 2020. Brexit will be dominating British politics for *years*. *Decades*, even. (Unless enough people finally come to the realisation that a country declaring economic sanctions on itself is monstrously dumb and just cancel the whole thing, of course…)

Yeah, so Johnson went to Europe with Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement (you know the one he and his ERG mates had repeatedly voted against), replaced the temporary backstop that was supposedly the reason they wouldn’t vote for it in the first place with a permanent border down the Irish sea, and caved in to various other EU demands. As someone much smarter than me described it at the time, it’s the political equivalent of paying full price for a DFS sofa. And then when he finally won a vote in parliament, he threw his toys out of the pram and pushed for an election that’s now taken up most of the article 50 extension time. Just as well we haven’t wasted our extension again…

But here we are, on Christmas Election Eve. And I fear what Election Santa has in store. I’m sure it’s some logical fallacy to overstate the importance of *events happening right now*, but to say this feels like quite an important election is something of an understatement. A majority Tory government can do a lot of damage in 5 years to an already divided and unequal country. Britain deserves better.

Categories
Australia Melbourne Politics

I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

We heard them before we saw them.

We were cutting through Parliament Gardens on our way to the city when we heard the muffled sound of a loudspeaker.

“Is that the Grand Prix?” I wondered aloud to Sal. A reasonable assumption I thought, given that the bee swarm like buzz of the cars whizzing around Albert Park had been clearly audible across much of inner Melbourne for the last few days. But as we turned the corner into Spring Street and saw crowds of photographers on the steps of the Parliament building and the police holding the traffic at bay, it was clear that some kind of protest was taking place on Bourke Street.

It wasn’t immediately obvious what the focus of the protest was: I could see signs attacking brown coal and promoting solar power but mixed in were some asking us to “Save Australia Post” and, quite wonderfully, “Stop Being Awful”. (Although no Down With This Sort Of Thing, sadly).

Stop Being Awful

As we walked down Bourke Street it became clear that the crowds were heading straight for us, so we ducked back onto the steps of the Palace Theatre to let them pass.

Teh internets tell me this was the #MarchInMarch. How have I not heard of this before? It seems you can turn up and march for whatever you like, and thousands of Melbournians young and old had chosen to do just that.

Despite the disparate causes, there were some common themes.

People before Profits. Gina Rinehart. Tony Abbott.

I can’t imagine that the “save our posties” guys, or the small group rather bizarrely asking for adoption to be made harder (no, me neither), or the “solar power” crew would necessarily hold the same views on everything, but everyone in that crowd could agree that Tony Abbott is a massive dick. If it’s possible to take a positive out of a negative, then the one thing you can say about last year’s election result is that at least it’s given us something we can all focus on. In many ways he is our George Bush. And I can’t quite imagine Malcolm Turnbull evoking the same sort of collective anger.

I Am So Angry I Made Another Sign

After a few more minutes of watching, we somehow made our way across to the other side of Bourke Street (it’s a bit like crossing the road in Thailand–you’ve just got to go for it…) and found a table at the Mess Hall, where we sipped lattes and perused the brunch menu while the crowds of thousands continued to stream past outside.

“What did you do in the revolution, daddy?”

“Er, well, I kind of missed it. But I did have the most delightful free range organic scrambled eggs on sourdough while it was happening outside…”

Categories
Australia Politics

I’m Not A Tech Head

So in the end this most predictable of federal elections played out just about the way everyone said it would.

I know I live in a bubble of latte-sipping inner city hipsters, and this is a big old country with lots of odd people in it, but at times the election seemed to be taking place in a parallel universe. There was a bit at the start where they just talked about boat people over and over, with both major parties trying to outdo each other in a race to the bottom to see who could have the most inhumane policies. I continue to find it odd that this is such a big topic for debate, when I can’t imagine it directly affects many people’s daily lives in this country (not to mention the fact that many more asylum seekers arrive by plane than boat every day…) Unless people actually think that boat people are responsible for Sydney traffic congestion? I mean that would be just ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

[Also, as a point of interest, I find it rather odd that no one ever really talks about how our new glorious leader arrived in Australia. Clue: it wasn’t by plane. He wasn’t seeking asylum, of course, but still you’d think someone might have pointed out the irony by now…]

At least the new government have a six one no point plan to deal with it though…

And there was a lot of talk about “cost of living” pressures, and the economy. It doesn’t seem to matter that Australia currently has one of the strongest economies in the world, that it avoided a recession when everything went pear shaped in the rest of developed world, kept its AAA credit rating and that the whole cost of living thing is only really a problem if you’re prepared to ignore all the, um, facts. But then what place do facts have in politics, when you can tell people what they want to hear instead?

So despite all the gaffes, the creepy daughter thing, the “sex appeal” comments, Rupert has got what he wanted.

For anyone who doesn’t know our new glorious leader, he’s a ten minute introduction that tells you just about everything you need to know, including the utterly bizarre footage of that time he just sort of nodded for 30 seconds in an interview like a buffering You Tube video (a sign of what to expect from the shiny new Liberal NBN I suppose…)

Categories
Australia Politics Uncategorized

Civic Duty

I just scraped in. Tomorrow I become an Australian citizen and — thanks to the special provisions that allow new citizens to provisionally enrol to vote — on Saturday I’ll get to exercise my civic duty in the 2013 Australian Federal Election.

I’m taking this seriously, even if I might just be in it for the sausages.

I’ve studied the advice from Dennis the Election Koala, I’ve read the only real guide to the election that anyone could ever need, and listened to the months and months of empty rhetoric, lies, half truths, and outright bullsh*t.

So tonight I fired up belowtheline.org.au/editor/melbourne and had my first crack at putting together my ballot paper.

Back home it’s just an X in a box and you’re done, but with preferential voting here in Australia you have to put them all in order. Yes. All of them.

The House of Representatives is reasonably straightforward, because there’s only 16 to choose from, but the Senate vote is for the whole of Victoria. That’s a whopping 97 candidates to put in order. (I mean you *could* vote “above the line” and let someone else choose for you, but where’s the fun in that?)

Some tough decisions to make, though. Given that I fundamentally disagree with the entire platforms of well over half of the senate ballot paper, how am I supposed to decide which ones are least worst? Family First, One Nation, Rise Up Australia… how do I decide which of these utterly objectionable groups goes last last, and which goes least last?

[Rise Up Australia did provide the most obviously ironic candidate, so maybe they should get points for that. This would be the ultra-nationalist, staunchly anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism party; their candidate for the House of Reps in Melbourne? Joyce Mei Lin Khoo]

Well anyway. I have made my choices, unless I change my mind again, I’ll be the one numbering 113 boxes on Saturday morning…

4th September 2013: Geez That's A Lot Of Boxes

Categories
Australia Media Politics Shoddy Journalism

Dear World’s Media

I know I shouldn’t expect people to, like, know stuff any more and I know it doesn’t really matter, but I post this here because:

1. I can’t believe that I seem to be the only person in the world who has noticed; and
2. It’s not often that that English degree I spent three years studying for comes in handy.

According to the story on the front page of today’s The Age, and apparently every other media outlet in the world, President Obama, speaking at a white tie function at Buck House last night, “concluded his toast with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III“:

Obama concluded his toast with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III.

‘To her Majesty the Queen, to the vitality of the special relationship between our peoples and in the words of Shakespeare, ‘to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”

Except he didn’t, did he, because that quote isn’t from Richard the third, it’s the John of Gaunt, “This Other Eden” speech from Richard the second:

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

(Funny how he left out the bit about “against the envy of less happier lands”, can’t think why…)

It’s the sort of thing you might expect a good sub editor to pick up.

Oh. Oops. This is the sort of thing that happens why you sack them all, isn’t it…

Meh. Richard II, Richard III. It’s all the same thing really isn’t it?

Categories
Australia Media Politics

Oh Look, The Alliance of Australian Retailers Got Hacked…

When I saw this ad on the TV earlier this evening, my first thought was that the “Alliance of Australian Retailers” (seen here campaigning against the Australian Labor government’s proposed introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes) would almost certainly turn out to be a front for some tobacco company…

…and of course it is, as The Age confirms (BAT, Philip Morris and Imperial, to be precise).

But then I went to their website, to read that “this campaign has ended”.

Really? That’s odd, I thought, given that I had just seen their ad on TV (and I spotted a massive billboard promoting their message just yesterday).

Even stranger, for a campaign supported by three tobacco companies, was the “What We Stand For” page, because apparently they stand for:

# Emphysema
# Coronary artery disease
# Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease
# Bladder and kidney cancer
# Stomach cancer
# Bronchitis
# Peripheral artery disease
# Acute myeloid leukemia
# Colorectal cancer
# Abdominal aortic aneurysm
# Kidney cancer
# Liver cancer
# Prostate cancer
# Pancreatic cancer
# Erectile dysfunction in men
# Pneumonia
# Cataracts
# Periodontitis
# Cervical cancer

Very true. But I wasn’t expecting quite that level of honesty from the tobacco giants… Were they planning a new direction of truth in advertising, I wondered?

Elsewhere the site told me that:

You can find links here to information about why smoking is bad, common smoking myths, and why Tobacco companies love to pose as Associations

I wondered if someone had set up a fake website to counteract the campaign, but, as the whois database confirms, www.australianretailers.com.au is indeed registered to the lobbying organisation behind the campaign (“The Civic Group”, a 10 employee company without much of a website of their own).

And then, as soon as I’d finished writing my post they were back on message, with the site reverting to the version I’d found in Google’s cache.

How very odd. I guess someone hacked into their website and made a few subtle changes. I wonder who was behind that little bit of internet japery (and how long it was live…)

Categories
Australia Politics

So This Guy Basically Runs Australia Now

I love a bit of politics, me. And normally I love elections. Give me a bit of round-the-clock, through-the-night, staying-with-it-till-the-results-are-in Dimbleby and I just can’t get enough of that coverage. I’ve stayed up through the night to watch the US elections unfolding before, and I happily had the BBC coverage running in the background at work as the results came in in the UK back in May.

But something about my first Aussie election left me a bit cold. Maybe it’s because although I’m a Permanent Resident here, live here, work here and pay my taxes, my lack of Aussie citizenship denies me the right to have a say in who gets to run the place (bit unfair, that, I reckon, given that Sal got to vote in the UK when we lived there, by virtue of having been born in the Commonwealth).

Or maybe it’s because the narrow range of issues that dominated the campaign seemed like issues so far removed from my own life, and the race to the bottom by two parties eager to tell the electorate what they thought they wanted to hear left me not really agreeing with either side (but just hoping whatever happened that the winner wasn’t going to be the budgie smuggling mad monk they call Tony Abbott…)

There was much discussion, for example, of “Boat People”, the unpleasant catch all term for refugees travelling overland to seek asylum in Australia. You wouldn’t know it from the predominant political narrative, but the places they arrive in Australia are really very, very far away from where most of the population of Australia lives and there are really very few of them–far, far less than the numbers of “plane people” who migrate here each year like I did, or the number of “womb people” who add to the population on a daily basis (although neither group rated a mention in this campaign for some reason). My own view (that all nations have a moral responsibility to be treating asylum seekers with dignity, rather than locking them up in offshore processing centres and treating them like criminals) unfortunately wasn’t one that was shared by either of the main parties, who competed between each other to tell this nation of immigrants how tough they’d be on these unfortunate new arrivals.

So I couldn’t get excited about this election at all. That was until it all changed on Saturday when things suddenly got interesting. Proving once again that this place just can’t help taking its cultural cues from the old dart, the voters of Australia, like their counterparts back in the UK, basically voted for no one.

Well, probably. As I understand it this thing is so close that it could be weeks before all the votes are counted, but what we do know is that no one won.

And since neither party will get the magic 76 seats it needs to form a majority government, they’ll need to sign up the 3 nutjob independent MPs and one greens MP (who unseated the Labor incumbent here in Melbourne) who have suddenly been thrust into the spotlight as kingmakers…

So, in essence, this guy now runs Australia:

Bob’s on the job. We live in interesting times indeed…

Categories
Australia Politics Religion

“…you’re a parliamentarian, in Australia, who believes that the world you live in is less than 10,000 years old…?”

An absolute pleasure, last night, while flicking through the small selection of terrestrial channels we have to choose from here in Australia, past the uninspiring Oscars coverage and dull US drama imports, to stumble across Richard Dawkins on Q and A, the ABC’s local version of Question Time.

If you watch this clip from the start of the show, you may be struck as I was by the gulf between Dawkins and the rest of the guests–juxtaposed with someone who can speak so articulately, the politicians on the panel seem spectacularly incapable of stringing a coherent argument together to explain their daft beliefs.

Steve Fielding, sitting to Dawkins’ left, came across particularly poorly by contrast, I thought.

People voted for this man?

Now I know that voting is compulsory here in Australia so it’s not like anyone went the extra mile out of their way to elect him, but do you really mean to tell me that there were choices and people chose him over the other candidates? Who was he up against?

[I see from his website that he’s also a Climate Change Denier, which is nice–I still don’t quite get how anyone in Australia can deny climate change. It’s a little bit like the turkeys voting for Christmas, because if there’s anywhere that’s going to bear the brunt of the increasingly extreme wacky weather we have to look forward to as a result of screwing up the planet, it’s surely Australia…]