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

[Vlad n U 2]

I would absolutely love to see a Joh biopic, assuming it doesn't fall into the hands of a dull, unimaginative director. It has to be dark, it has to be insane.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I seriously hope you're writing this stuff for somewhere more significant than Interference, because that's a great, clear take.

Nope, I'm not. And nothing I've said is anything that scholars like Rae Wear haven't already said.

Joh definitely benefitted from straddling eras - and in more than one sense. Politically, socially, economically, he could draw support from multiple Queenslands. This was a man who at heart stood for a conservative rural Queensland, but who could command allegiance through much of the increasingly urbanised southeast. He still has many admirers on the Gold Coast, as I know from personal experience. Corruption? Who cares; he was a powerful authority figure, and many people there like that sort of larger-than-life character.

Nothing succeeds like success. He'd still be premier if he hadn't gotten greedy (and of course died of old age). Seriously, it really is like Goodfellas or something, people start using their own product and before you know it you're trying to juggle the gravy with the cocaine pickup while looking out for that helicopter in the sky.

And I confess my first association with Forgan Smith is spending most of my year at UQ attending classes in the building named for him. (It also had the coldest water fountain on campus, essential knowledge in summer! I still make sure to pass by it when I visit UQ these days.)

All I know about him is that he was one of that string of Labor premiers who ruled the roost for four decades, in his case during most of the Great Depression. Apparently he learned at the knee of Keir Hardie in his youth.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I would absolutely love to see a Joh biopic, assuming it doesn't fall into the hands of a dull, unimaginative director. It has to be dark, it has to be insane.

This has to happen.

They tried the made-for-tv version with 'Joh's Jury' (featuring that guy who used to impersonate Joh on Fast Foward), but now we need the brutal version.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Problem is, you'd probably need an Australian director - unless of course you'd want to give Alfonso Cuaron or Danny Boyle a biography and let them have at it from there on.

There's too many possibilities so I will just daydream about how it will look in my head.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Get whoever made Blue Murder onto it.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I guess you'd also have to put Richard Roxburgh in it somehow.

 

[Kieran McConville]

He's old enough to play Sir Robert Sparkes now I guess.

 

[cobl04]

How can the Liberals be this bad? This is so shit on every level

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I mentioned earlier, it's embarrassing. If a campaign ad could cost either party the election it would be this. The actor is not at all believable, and tradies the country over will be cringing.

 

[Axver]

B-b-b-but the Liberal Party swears he's a real tradie! Would they ever lie to us?

 

[Vlad n U 2]

In the event that he is real, he'd be ostracised to hell by his tradie colleagues - and rightfully so. He'd be the butt of jokes for years.

 

[Axver]

At least he'd be getting ahead with his investment property though.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The field here in Groom is just scintillating. We've got LNP, Labor, Greens, The Nick Xenophon Project and this aspiring statesman from Family First...

John Sands

Family First

Sands is a Professor of Accounting with a PhD and has a great deal of corporate and academic experience and achievements in business and finance. He lives at Toowoomba and is married with four children aged between 39 and 12, and also volunteers time educating and empowering people about money in the community. Sands has enjoyed ballroom and Latin American dancing since the 80s, and has a passion for sports.

He's going to win by boring us to death.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I miss the good old days when political ads were sinister black and white with that 'DUN DUN' Law & Order piano plonking soundtrack.

One of the more effective Liberal ones was from 1996, featuring slowed-down footage of Gareth Evans dancing at the 1993 victory party. Black and white, of course.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Professor of Accounting

I have already fallen asleep.

 

[Kieran McConville]

but wait, he's also an afficianado of ballroom dancing.

 

[Kieran McConville]

What struck me about the man's bio was that it offered little, in fact no insight, as to why he's running for parliament, or doing it for Family Fist.

 

[Axver]

What struck me about the man's bio was that it offered little, in fact no insight, as to why he's running for parliament, or doing it for Family Fist.

If you had posted that without giving the party affiliation I'm really not sure I would've guessed it.

Ruling out the LNP, I would've taken a punt on the Liberal Democrats or Nick Xenophon's Great Vanity.

 

[Axver]

Also, I work with a lot of strange people who study strange things for strange reasons (I might be one of them), and I can often see what drew them to their field even if I think it's ludicrous, impractical, or uninteresting.

I still can't fathom where somebody gains the ambition to be a professor of accounting.

I once had to read - part of - a book on the history of my university's accounting department. I couldn't believe it existed, mainly because I assumed the writer would've been unable to get out of bed by about the third day of research.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Also, I work with a lot of strange people who study strange things for strange reasons (I might be one of them), and I can often see what drew them to their field even if I think it's ludicrous, impractical, or uninteresting.

I still can't fathom where somebody gains the ambition to be a professor of accounting.

I once had to read - part of - a book on the history of my university's accounting department. I couldn't believe it existed, mainly because I assumed the writer would've been unable to get out of bed by about the third day of research.

As someone who staggered through three units related to the topic, back in the day, I've concluded that anyone who can manage above a bare pass grade in accounting subject (many actual accountants never did!) is by definition deathly dull.

 

[Kieran McConville]

If you had posted that without giving the party affiliation I'm really not sure I would've guessed it.

Ruling out the LNP, I would've taken a punt on the Liberal Democrats or Nick Xenophon's Great Vanity.

I would have been prepared to go with Xenophon's party or maybe #yesallaccountants (not an actual party), if I didn't know better. But now I do. Still tempted to put this guy slightly ahead, just to stick it to the insufferable John McVeigh.

 

[Axver]

As someone who staggered through three units related to the topic, back in the day

I hope you sought the help you clearly needed at the time.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I hope you sought the help you clearly needed at the time.

It's not like i had a choice, one was the intro to accounting that every undergraduate has to take, the next was bundled into a government major and the third, I can't even remember what it was, maybe I was clinically insane by that point.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Actually I take it back, there is one sphere of study, if you can call it that, which is both duller and yet somehow more pernicious than accounting. Human resources.

 

[Axver]

It's not like i had a choice, one was the intro to accounting that every undergraduate has to take, the next was bundled into a government major and the third, I can't even remember what it was, maybe I was clinically insane by that point.

Good lord, I'm glad I never copped a degree structured like that. I got through undergrad never doing a single subject outside history or political science/international relations.

I actually now regret that, because I wish I had done some geography and, yes, economics. Not accounting.

And human resources doesn't really count as a field of study, let's be honest here.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Good lord, I'm glad I never copped a degree structured like that. I got through undergrad never doing a single subject outside history or political science/international relations.

I actually now regret that, because I wish I had done some geography and, yes, economics. Not accounting.

And human resources doesn't really count as a field of study, let's be honest here.

The great majority of my first year subjects were things that nearly everyone had to take regardless of what major they intended to end up doing. Some of it was just knucklehead stuff like learning to use a computer (which, in fairness, I didn't know prior, and in fact I continued submitting essays longhand until the end of uni because the labs were just too inconvenient to deal with late at night and of course none of us actually owned computers in those days).

 

[Axver]

My markers ought to be grateful I submitted everything typed. Undergrad was the nadir of my handwriting, thanks to frantic lecture note-taking.

In high school I had lovely handwriting and today I have flowing, somewhat old-fashioned handwriting that is generally legible (especially if you know the old cursive "p" and don't think it's an elaborate "h"). But oh man even I can't read some of the scrawl from undergrad.

 

[Kieran McConville]

My markers ought to be grateful I submitted everything typed. Undergrad was the nadir of my handwriting, thanks to frantic lecture note-taking.

In high school I had lovely handwriting and today I have flowing, somewhat old-fashioned handwriting that is generally legible (especially if you know the old cursive "p" and don't think it's an elaborate "h"). But oh man even I can't read some of the scrawl from undergrad.

My printed or cursive writing was pretty decent until I got past uni.

These days, notes scribbled on my pad while on the phone look like the work of someone in the middle stages of dementia. My signature is basically 'K' followed by a vague squiggle/wave (partly deliberate, I've gotten wilder and sloppier with it mostly for fun over the years). At what point does one's hand decline so much that a signature is for all intents and purposes worthless?

 

[Axver]

My favourite signatures are those where there is absolutely no connection whatsoever with their name, like a weird O with a tail, or a formless ~~~~ for somebody with a name that should have a bit of variation like Timothy.

Mine's not too bad. Some of the letters have blurred together with time but usually you can distinguish at least a bit of an attempt at each one.

Despite my own handwriting and all my time with old documents, I still get flummoxed by some styles though. Who cares how nice your writing looks if it's fucking illegible.

 

[coolian2]

My printed or cursive writing was pretty decent until I got past uni.

These days, notes scribbled on my pad while on the phone look like the work of someone in the middle stages of dementia. My signature is basically 'K' followed by a vague squiggle/wave (partly deliberate, I've gotten wilder and sloppier with it mostly for fun over the years). At what point does one's hand decline so much that a signature is for all intents and purposes worthless?

Going off my experience, about 16 years old.