6 - # of Straya threads or # of times we've changed Prime Minister in a decade?

[Kieran McConville]

yes. Actually where we get them.

 

[Kieran McConville]

On the - bizarre - off chance that you actually think that character at FYM is me, Axver; it isn't. I have a couple of alters from my first stint here circa 2002/3 (Bad Ronnie, Interactive Pooh), but they were always nonpolitical and frankly I haven't logged in except as myself in about ten years.

 

[Axver]

Oh no, that was just a tongue-in-cheek post, albeit a plausible conspiracy theory.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Ah, good, good to hear. My bad then.

It is plausible I suppose, if I'd only thought to register the identity in 2002 and keep it on ice until one day fourteen years later.

 

[Axver]

I must admit I thought you did have a couple of periodically revived alters, the origin stories around which are lost to the mists of Interference time (and to me, not being active in many of the off-topic forums until 2008).

 

[Kieran McConville]

There were a couple but barely if ever revived. I might have given Bad Ronnie (of Bad Ronnie's ground meats emporium, aka McDonalds) a spin a second time around 2009 or so, but that's about it.

You may be thinking of Zoomerang96, who had/has about a million of the things.

 

[Axver]

On an entirely unrelated note, it's local elections day here in Victoria and getting updates of the results is not entirely easy. Neither Fairfax nor News seem terribly interested in the outcome.

But disappointingly it looks like Melbourne's Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle of the Libs, has been re-elected.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...s-twitter-views-as-the-sun-gives-him-red-card

This is amusing as hell to me. You only need to not hate refugees and these rags will have it in for you.

 

[Kieran McConville]

On an entirely unrelated note, it's local elections day here in Victoria and getting updates of the results is not entirely easy. Neither Fairfax nor News seem terribly interested in the outcome.

But disappointingly it looks like Melbourne's Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle of the Libs, has been re-elected.

Hey, didn't he used to be the leader of the opposition or something?

 

[Kieran McConville]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...s-twitter-views-as-the-sun-gives-him-red-card

This is amusing as hell to me. You only need to not hate refugees and these rags will have it in for you.

It's The Sun. You only need to not film yourself beating up refugees to get those guys on your case.

 

[cobl04]

On an entirely unrelated note, it's local elections day here in Victoria and getting updates of the results is not entirely easy. Neither Fairfax nor News seem terribly interested in the outcome.

But disappointingly it looks like Melbourne's Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle of the Libs, has been re-elected.

I suspect if you had been watching Leader's social media they would have been covering it live. But it's very hard for me to be enthused about them. I was in and out in 30 seconds, I took a Greens how-to-vote card and listed them 1,2,3 and then numbered the rest from top to bottom.

 

[Axver]

Hey, didn't he used to be the leader of the opposition or something?

Yep, led them for four years in the wilderness against Steve Bracks. Got two-fifths of nowhere.

This will be his third term as mayor. Business loves him, which tells you most of what you need to know. He's a small-l liberal so some of his social attitudes aren't too bad and he's worked reasonably well with the Andrews government to improve night-time public transport, but his heavy-handed and crude responses to things like Occupy Melbourne show his true colours.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...s-twitter-views-as-the-sun-gives-him-red-card

This is amusing as hell to me. You only need to not hate refugees and these rags will have it in for you.

It's The Sun. You only need to not film yourself beating up refugees to get those guys on your case.

Haha, these posts aren't wrong. Crazy. (Also, now I know what all the tweets about Lineker were going on about.)

I suspect if you had been watching Leader's social media they would have been covering it live. But it's very hard for me to be enthused about them. I was in and out in 30 seconds, I took a Greens how-to-vote card and listed them 1,2,3 and then numbered the rest from top to bottom.

The Moreland Leader's Facebook and Twitter accounts haven't had any updates all weekend.

I didn't think I gave a shit but then my inner election nerd surfaced as results started trickling through. Sam Ratnam has absolutely dominated South Ward, she may have even won two quotas for the Greens in her own right. The ALP will lose Brunswick at the state election in two years.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I guess all the small-l business liberals are in local and state government right now. The federal sphere seems to be the preserve of a more rarefied breed of kulturkamf mixed with an almost touching economic cargo cult.

 

[cobl04]

Are the results up?! I can't make heads or tails of the VEC website

 

[Axver]

I guess all the small-l business liberals are in local and state government right now. The federal sphere seems to be the preserve of a more rarefied breed of kulturkamf mixed with an almost touching economic cargo cult.

I suppose if you're the sort of small-l liberal who has a boner for business or for property development, local government is often the place to be. The property qualification to vote for local government means that the City of Melbourne keeps electing right-wing mayors despite its residents being firmly Green.

Are the results up?! I can't make heads or tails of the VEC website

They're a provisional early count, but enough has been counted to be a representative sample.

As far as our ward goes, Sam Ratnam is so safely elected it's not funny. As a consequence, votes for her will carry on at quite a substantial value to their second preference (which for most people will be Mark Riley, the #2 on the Green ticket, but for me will be the independent Mel Yuan, whose professional campaign and informed presentation impressed me). Riley will be elected easily.

Then it's a race of preferences for whether Lambros Tampinos or Meghan Hopper - both currently sitting councillors for the ALP - can snare the third spot. I think Tapinos has got it. He's got a handy lead on primary votes, and the Greens (somewhat to my surprise, since Lambros is ALP Right) put him above Hopper. I'd prefer Hopper.

 

[cobl04]

I did literally zero research and didn't even read your whole post.

I hope Phil Cleary stays it out. Doyle's profile is really big but I think he could be very easily ousted next term. I think he won this time around because his profile was bigger than anyone else. Phil needs better a social media team. Maybe I could do that...

 

[Axver]

Yeah, I thought Cleary would poll stronger than he did, especially with the Corkman demolition right before the election (though the City of Melbourne is a postal vote so many people may have voted before that happened). I just wonder if he'll have as optimal circumstances in four years.

 

[intedomine]

You spend much time at the Corkman, Axver?

I conducted a whole assignment on it! It was a really nice little venue for tutes/group meetings etc.

Shattered and furious to see it demolished


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin

 

[Axver]

Actually I went there very rarely, since I'm not normally down that end of campus. But it was a good pub and the demolition is absolutely outrageous. Pissing off the law students is going to come back to bite the owners, that's for sure. Pretty much the last group of people you want to annoy.

My usual watering holes are Naughton's, Tsubu, and the Clyde. It's almost worrying how well I know the staff at the first two. Back in the day I had a few tutes at Tsubu and the former PA's, which ought to reopen soon; upstairs at PA's was a pretty good venue for them. A lot of people derided PA's as a nasty undergrad pub, and it was fairly gross of an evening, but I really liked it for lunch.

 

[cobl04]

I've never heard of any of them except Clyde, assuming that's the one on Elgin St? That the 1 and the 8 go past?

 

[cobl04]

I also struggled to be too outraged because there's so much of this development and establishments being torn down for apartments and there's 10 minutes of outrage but the developers win. Hopefully something nice happens this time around.

 

[Axver]

That's the one. The Clyde has a great atmosphere and some decent beers on tap but awful food. Worst pub food I've had in Melbourne, I think. I often drink there and eat elsewhere.

Naughton's and Tsubu are both good but the main reason I'm such a regular is because Naughton's is on Royal Parade just opposite my building and Tsubu is actually on the Parkville campus (and is unofficially the postgrad/staff pub).

Sometimes we wander down to the Last Jar, which incidentally is managed by the people who used to manage the Corkman. Though I still feel odd going in there because it used to be the Arthouse, the home of live punk and metal in Melbourne. RIP The Arty.

 

[cobl04]

am I going insane or does Andrew Bolt, at 4:40 in this video, advocate for the redistribution of wealth!?!?

[tweet]790464909972692992[/tweet]

 

[Axver]

The tweet looks like it was written by an Andrew Bolt Bot.

As for the video, damn you Cobbler making me watch some of that. Isn't he saying, though, that immigration makes each individual less wealthy?

 

[Kieran McConville]

Housing prices are going through the roof because real estate is the main sink for 'investment' in this country. It's an unproductive, immoral and wasteful bubble and I'm amazed it hasn't popped yet.

I'm going to guess that Andrew Bolt wasn't talking about that.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Incidentally, for a few minutes earlier this evening every major site on the internet went down. Strange but true. Another one of those DDOS attacks, I'd guess.

 

[Axver]

I evidently managed to miss that one, much like I missed the one a couple of days ago.

Or maybe nobody gives a shit about the websites I hang out on. That'd be about right.

 

[Kieran McConville]

You ever hang out on Google? Cause it was down.

 

[Axver]

So, uh, how 'bout that Bob Day, guyz?

I'll just copy this from my Facebook, since K-Macca might have something to say on the topic (I promise I'll never call you that again):

I have at least been cheered up a little today by the hilarity (and constitutional nerdiness) that is the situation of Bob Day, South Australian Senator for Family First, whose on-and-off resignation has been outpaced by the possibility his election was invalid in the first place.

I've tried to piece together some preliminary thoughts. Day appears to be ineligible to stand for election under section 44(v) of the constitution, which covers matters of pecuniary interest. The only possible precedent there is the case of Webster in 1975, where the court's judgement is widely criticised, would be revised, and is not very relevant. There are, however, precedents from section 44(i), which covers citizenship and ruled out Wood in 1988 and Hill in 1998. If Day is ineligible to be elected, his case is like those two. It is not a casual vacancy; rather he was not eligible to be elected, thus a recount excluding him is necessary.

I think Wood's case is more relevant than Hill's to understanding what might happen. Wood was the first candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, which stood only two candidates. To be eligible for a box above the line, a party needs a minimum of two candidates, so with Wood not in the recount, what happened to the NDP's second? In that instance, the court ruled that this candidate could be included in the count as if they were a valid ticket. I'm not sure why this precedent would not be upheld here, though it appears the ALP is prepared to argue it should not be. Anybody got any ideas why it would not be upheld?

(If the precedent is upheld, the second Family First candidate will be elected. Funnily enough, I believe Day - when he was merely resigning - was manoeuvring within the party to get a different individual appointed to his casual vacancy.)

There's also this interview with Antony Green that's worth listening to if you care about this: PM - Confusion surrounds departure of Family First Senator Bob Day 01/11/2016

 

[Kieran McConville]

I'm terribly afraid I don't have a ton to say on this topic. If he wasn't eligible to stand in the first place, bad luck for him I guess. Who, pray tell, is the second candidate?