A week ago today, I attended the memorial for Bill Leak at the Sydney Town Hall.
As I scanned the crowd, an eclectic group of people who had known Bill one way or another, I had to ask where were the Labor people? Where was Shorten, Plibersek or Dreyfus?
In the wake of the 2004 election, with the Howard government enjoying a majority in both houses, there was no opposition in the parliament. For at least two years, the worst part of Coalition MPs’ days was opening up The Australian and flipping to Bill Leak’s cartoon, to see another hilarious lampooning of their leader.
I would have thought some of the Labor people might have made an appearance simply out of gratitude for those dark days. It bothers me they stayed away and it speaks of a faddish clannishness the old Labor people would regard with contempt.
Bill Leak embraced everyone he met. Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, it didn’t matter. He genuinely enjoyed the company of people but it was more than that. If he spied someone feeling awkward or a bit uncomfortable, Bill would bound up and make a fuss of them. He not only had the ability to make people feel special but he brought a sense of fairness and equity to any table.
It is a politician’s gift but Bill was not on the ballot. He wasn’t trying to sell anything. He simply loved people.
Full column here.
Are we getting a Friday special, Jack?
Alas, no. Seven mire sleeps, Milton.
Yes we are getting a Friday special Milton……GO THE COWBOYS!!
Sorry Bassman, with 10 mins left on the clock now SOUTHS really do deserve a much higher score in tonights game.
Bella x
I was at the game Bella and it was great to see them get up. I needed it after my Broncs got done the night before.
Nothing like the atmosphere at a home game.
” Friday Special ” is that something like a Morning Glory ? ….
Only if you’re an April fool Bill. If your dream came true, you’d pay for it one way or another.
Bloody hell, I would have been on top of the tipping table with zero in the margins if that show off from Richmond didn’t kick that unnecessary goal with 45 seconds to go.
Yes, the Labor “cocktail” Bill Shorten championed yesterday turned out to be nothing more than a union activist/agitator.
Typical left-wing duplicity.
Why cant a worker who is in the union complain about a pay cut??? Are you against free speech CotC??? No cuts to Education, No Cuts to Health, No cuts to Pensions. Core and No core Promises, Children overboard??? Duplicity????? Get you head out of your arse.
A few more random punctuation marks will help to more solidly develop your thesis. Throw in a few oddly-placed capital letters to really emphasize your point.
My dear fellow Dismayed, your raucous ramblings present as a chap whose gullibility is in conflict with even a modicum of credulity. A chap whose abject paucity of social intelligence is so easily manipulated that your tendency to believe unlikely propositions bereft of any plausible evidence is pitiful.
Your maladaptive outbursts eg. “Get your head out of your arse” is a definite signal that you may have contracted a dysfunctional, non-productive behaviour pattern that requires serious attention.
My best advice to you as a fellow blogger is to get it seen to ASAP mate. You can be so much better than what you presently are.
What the…….. ! Carl. You’re onto something. After reading your breathtakingly verbose florid epistles exceedingly bereft of detail and overburdened with nebulous generalisations I feel like I have just partaken of a cigarette, the contents of the same richly laced with a narcotic substance.
An extraordinary effect! Whilst writing these marvellous hallucinogenic musings do you feel an irresistible urge to devour copious quantities of pasta and Mars bars?
Aaahh …., noshing on a nougat, pleasure you can’t measure.
Ahh yes we the coalition continues it’s decades old attack on superannuation by trying to hand the banks a free kick and provide default super to them. Never mind the industry supers consistently outperform and have much lower fees than the retail funds. KOD must have to repay some of the donations from the banks she formerly worked for by handing them the savings of Australians to chew up through fees and lower returns. the coalition only have one policy setting that is their narrow minded ideology. This government is a disgrace.
Poor old PM Milton Trumble, Mr Insider, he cant get a win of any type. He’s the most useless PM I have ever seen. Couldn’t organise the “proverbial” in a brothel!
I think it is called “sexual gratification in a house of ill repute” Henry.
And yes, his “reign” will be viewed in retrospect with the same disdain as Fraser’s – wasted.
There are quite a few similarities between the two men and how they came to power and their attitudes.
Remember “Life was not meant to be easy” but at least Turnbull has not lost his trousers .. yet.
Shorten thinks, and probably correctly, that he has him by the short and curlies and will not give an inch.
And there lies the problem for Shorten – nobody in their right mind is going to elect a party that he leads.
He will probably win the reps but today’s Senate will look like a pussy cat compared with the one that he will have to deal with.
Obstructionism will have its just rewards – especially when the future of the country is at stake.
“Penny. says:
MARCH 29, 2017 AT 11:55 PM
If JTI can’t talk about cricket, I imagine he’d shut the blog down.”
And so he bloody well should. While many of his pieces are written about political issues, even when they aren’t the commentary heads that way. Yet the leader of our federal government has changed 6 times in ten years. Does it matter? No, not really.
But we would never change our test cricket captain that often. Imagine if we did. We’d be a basket case, a banana republic, a busted-arse country, an international laughing stock, a failed state.
Stability is important. Cricket is important.
Also from earlier:
Pauline Hanson reckons that political correctness has ”shut us down from being able to have an opinion”
Christ on a bike. This from a woman who was elected and now taxpayer funded to give politically incorrect opinions. To be fair, not all her comments are politically incorrect. The others are incorrect in a more general sense. Shut up, Pauline. Actually fxxk off, Pauline. If we really need the input of a life form with your intelligence in the parliament, we can clean a swimming pool and find millions of them.
Last paragraph. Five gold stars. Made my day already.
Shallow end of the gene pool?
Perentie, re your “Actually fxxk off, Pauline” intercourse.
Take care not to continue to pedal that sort of stuff lest you be regarded as having a similar acumen as the organisms you appear to have experienced whilst wallowing and/or propelling yourself in artificial places of bathing.
Crikey! What are these organisms Carl? It sounds very exciting but where can one find them and will one run foul of the laws pertaining to bestiality if one should indulge in the experience?
B. Bishop on Fox tonight with another conservative sycophant David Speers. That old lady has lost the plot. The Nation is much better off without her in the parliament. its the socialists it’s the socialists she repeated and repeated. somehow the socialists are responsible for her use of expenses and she is being victimised and the socialists are not and this is all part of the socialist plot. Far out man. this is a nasty arrogant ignorant piece of work. I wonder if she is actually from Tasmania?
OK it’s not a socialist plot, but a socialist plot is a bloody good idea. A bloody big plot!
Whop it up ’em. Make ’em take it!
How many socialists can you reasonably plant per hectare?
Depends how deep the hole is.
Not that sort of plot. Try and keep up. A plot as in revolution, pitchforks and tumbrils and guillotines. That sort of thing.
Oh cripes does that mean I’ll have to learn to knit?
Haha – good one Tracy!
No Tracy. Digital photography will be just fine. Should be fantastic with all those huge television screens around the ground, slo mo close up replays and a running commentary from the experts.
I think there might be a bust of Stalin on her desk, along with the spent howitzer shells.
Tasmania is full of socialists. Dismayed. You contradict your own statement. Greens territory. Do you have a problem with that? Not Bronwyn’s cup of tea one would have thought.
Have to admit that while she was still our MP she turned out to many of the meetings we had about the council amalgamations, never saw Abbott at any of them. There are mutterings that Tony may have a time of it at pre-selection but (like Bronwyn) it will be nigh on impossible to to dislodge him, it’s been tried before.
He has been stirring away in the background at state level for his preferred candidates but nothing much has come of it
She was quite a good local member Tracey.
I heard so too JS. Pity she met such a sticky end – because she sure as hell wasn’t, and isn’t, the only one taking advantage of privileges. On both sides.
Not going to be a lot of fat people around in the future.
It could be a reason why we are developing agriculture in the NT at break neck speed – hopefully not using aquifers.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39431680
I heard about peak phosphorus for the first time the other day.
No phosphorus – no life as it makes up a large percentage of DNA.
We eat it and then put it out to see as sewerage. Somebody in the future will have to find a way of recovering it – maybe as a by-product of all those Tassie fish farms :).
Pffft! Don’t sweat the small stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYlRk377Wq0
Geez, does he know how to spin it out!
I’ve known about it for quite sometime.
The problem – too many people on the planet. Our solution – none – our humanity says there cannot be one.
The planet’s?
Famine and then the mass movement of people and then the culling either by warfare or ignoring those suffering,
When?
I think we will get by for another generation or two.
You think we will get by for another generation or two? Very scientific method there. Nobodies listening, we’re all living in cuckoo land. We are seriously stuffed because we’ve been in denial for decades. Heres the short version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M
This commentary may interest you JB.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-watson/why-fighting-donald-trump_b_12951212.html
Regards, Bella
Top link Bella.
Looks like we are cooked whatever we do. The oceans have already sequestered so much heat that cleaning up the atmosphere and countering the global dimming effect will make things even worse.
Best thing to do is to sit back and watch the show. When the trained seals finally realise they’ve been dudded on a terminal biblical scale there should be great opportunities for religious entrepreneurs catering to those seeking alternative accommodation in mysterious places following their imminent demise. They’ll be keen to divest themselves of their worldly goods I imagine.
I expect to be a billionaire. Briefly.
Give ’em heaps.
Such was life. It was always going to end badly when the monkeys got electricity.
Tassie fish farms – tricky subject at the moment JS!! They are polluting pristine waters around here – and not everyone is too happy with that!
Yuk!
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2766962.htm
Yep iut’s a worry JB. They have granted a lease to Tassal to farm just off Maria Island. One of the most beautiful areas of the East coast here. Thank God I sailed it when it was still pristine.
Tassie is at a fork in the road right now – let the developers destroy what people come to enjoy – or try and keep it pristine. Worrying.
JTI – good article on the subject from Charles Woolley in the Mercury Weekend Tasmanian magazine today.
All of us who are white by race have white privilege, which generally means ‘beyond the advantages of most’. We don’t experience racial oppression & if you’re a man, you’re not often concerned about how women have to work that much harder to prove herself in a career.
Men don’t see that because you have the luxury of not noticing just how much advantage you get in a society with access to resources, but it’s not hard to see for those without it.
Don’t take it personally Trivalve, it just is & the cap fits those three dishonest prigs perfectly.
They’re widely known as the battery hens of the sea now.
Even their ‘pink’ flesh is chemically induced.
Why do we believe we can grow our food with poisons?
Imagine what that industry is doing to the ecosystem.
In other news, it’s raining here. A lot. Possibly close to 8 inches in 24 hours or so – and I have a strange suspicion we’re in something of a rain shadow.
Politics is getting sillier and weirder by the day, too.
Mark Mayhem seems to have turned into the thing he despised when he was in Parliament as well.
Vics. have won the shield from the SACA’s. T. Head makes a century, may have just played his way into the No.5 spot as a straight swap for S. Marsh. Chad Sayers finishes with 62 wickets for the season.