5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best city

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Kieran, I would have been genuinely surprised had you posted anything different.
 
Axver said:
Well exactly, I don't agree with the motivation. But if the government does try to push it hard - and I'm not sure they will, since it screams "out of touch!" and brings back images of Joe Hockey trying to talk about poor people - then I wonder if there is the potential to negotiate rather than be flat-out opposed. Sometimes flat-out opposition works very well (WorkChoices), but other times it spectacularly backfires (Kennett really punished public transport in the wake of the epic tram strikes of the early nineties). A platform to establish a consistent weekend penalty rate could be amenable, since business gets its big ticket item of lowering Sunday rates while unions get to keep on balance existing conditions.

And I'm not convinced business would win a discussion on whether workers are paid too much. Some quarters have been spoiling for that fight for a while and they can't get any traction. In a way I almost want to dare them to bring it up, because - to cite WorkChoices again - there's nothing like an attack on workers' conditions to really unleash the rage against the Libs.
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What you say there is true, although I suppose it depends what workers we're talking about. Business lobbies and their political arms are remarkably good at pitting people against each other. For mine, if it came down to paying someone a (currently) prescribed rate on a Sunday or some fucking cafe not opening that day because poor-bugger-me, then let them stay closed that day. Maybe there's a message there.
 
Holy fuck. Russell Gilbert's wife took her own life on RUOK day and he went missing. Has just been found by police. Jesus christ.


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Axver said:
Kieran, I would have been genuinely surprised had you posted anything different.
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I'm not just being cute though; if I genuinely did like the Preatures, I'd say so. But i really don't. Overwrought, formulaic soul-pop that wants me to like it so bad.

Sorry to hear about Russell Gilbert and his wife, that's some kind of fucked up.
 
Miranda Devine is the definition of a cunt. Bolt, Hadley, Jones et al, I can cop. They might say some terrible shit but at least they aren't completely unhinged. Devine is genuinely dangerous. She is a fucking horrible excuse for a human being.
 
5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best...

She's atrocious, but I despise Panahi more though. Her stuff keeps flashing up on FB so perhaps this fuels my disdain.


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Bolt, Hadley, Jones are all essentially cartoon villains. Devine is devoid of human empathy.
 
I don't like her either but she also *occasionally* posts things I can get on board with or provides a good counterpoint on twitter when there can be a bit of an echo chamber.

Like, for example, Panahi was posting the other day about how Wayne Carey shouldn't have a job in the media (he fucking interviewed the woman who was hit on Friday night).

Devine, on the other hand... I'm not going to link to the article but look it up.
 
So what do you folks - especially Cobbler - think of Chris Brown being denied entry to Australia?

On the one hand, what a total fuckhead of a person. On the other, why do the people campaigning against these shitbags never go after white musicians? I never see extreme metal bands targeted and there are some real unsavoury characters in some of them.
 
5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best...

On one hand I support it since his music is garbage and so is he. But what if it was an artist I liked? And on the other hand it seems that these bans/campaigns to ban disproportionately target black men. Surfer Blood toured here in 2013; in 2012 lead singer John Paul Pitts was arrested for belting his girlfriend. And on the other hand these bans/campaigns to ban also seem arbitrary. If you kick up a massive stink to ban one artist (who by the way has toured here in the six years since the incident) then you should be applying it to all artists. And if you ban every artist who's done something shit you'd be left with The Wiggles. And they've probably got some demons too


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I think it's a bit of a joke. He's a dickhead but so many artists have done dickish things and gotten away with it. He just did his shit during the rise of social media to one of the biggest celebrities in the world. So many other people get away with it. It's incredibly important to spread the right message and Chris Brown should really be doing more to help his image, but I believe everyone deserves another chance as long as they truly learn and campaign against what they did wrong. And if Surfer Blood wanker can come here, then Chris Brown and Tyler the Creator certainly can.
 
Caleb Bond has used his latest opinion piece to have a tantrum about "feminazis". :love:
 
Wow, it's like a bad dystopia north of the Murray.

We better send some care packages ASAP.
 
"Well uh yes she did not uh like potatoes and I, a uh a potato, will just not have my family insulted like that"


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You have to wonder how low this administration can go. I'm not sure it's hyperbolic to call them repugnant thugs.
 
That new coat of paint doesn't mean shit, and yes, they are one of the vilest governments I can remember in modern times. Labor has deep, deep problems, but our local GOP is exhibiting all the signs of terminal moral and intellectual decay.

I just keep waiting for the tipping point. In the US and UK respectively, one could point to the Bernie Sanders candidacy and the Jeremy Corbyn Labor leadership election as signs of something shifting, even if I do not expect either figure to go anywhere in the long run. But they exist. Here? Fucking God knows.
 
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Kieran McConville said:
That new coat of paint doesn't mean shit, and yes, they are one of the vilest governments I can remember in modern times. Labor has deep, deep problems, but our local GOP is exhibiting all the signs of terminal moral and intellectual decay.

I just keep waiting for the tipping point. In the US and UK respectively, one could point to the Bernie Sanders candidacy and the Jeremy Corbyn Labor leadership election as signs of something shifting, even if I do not expect either figure to go anywhere in the long run. But they exist. Here? Fucking God knows.
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:up:

I'm not sure what it says about Australian politics that the two politicians of the last ten years to enjoy any serious cult of personality are a crazed egomaniac, Kevin Rudd, and a wealthier egomaniac, Malcolm Turnbull, two men whose politics are in many important regards very similar. I have no fucking idea where our Sanders or Corbyn is meant to come from. This has to be one of the least fertile political fields for a considerable period of time.

cobl04 said:
Ax I thought the East Brunswick was being torn down for apartments. It's back open!
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Yeah I've been meaning to go! I thought the whole thing was being knocked down, but it turns out it was just the band room that was ripped out for apartments. It'll be weird going back there.
 
Axver said:
:up:

I'm not sure what it says about Australian politics that the two politicians of the last ten years to enjoy any serious cult of personality are a crazed egomaniac, Kevin Rudd, and a wealthier egomaniac, Malcolm Turnbull, two men whose politics are in many important regards very similar. I have no fucking idea where our Sanders or Corbyn is meant to come from. This has to be one of the least fertile political fields for a considerable period of time.
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Meanwhile the Greens elected a nice enough bloke who - fair play to the guy, I am not condemning him - seems to me to be entirely too nonideological for his role.

There's an awful lot in common between Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, and I think the Liberals will come to rue this era. In a different way to the long Abbott reign, it is only putting off the day of reckoning (at least part of why they're struggling so much is that important sections of the front bench are still the Howard c-team, if slightly less so than two months ago. And the backbench are the Howard d-team, they're like the secular version of John Paul II's college of cardinals). That doesn't help the rest of us though. Still holding out for a minority Labor government as the better-than-nothing stopgap for the next few years.
 
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I'll say this, it's a shame, if entirely understandable, that Greg Combet decided he'd had a gutful. He might have been 'that guy', in different circumstances.
 
Kieran McConville said:
Meanwhile the Greens elected a nice enough bloke who - fair play to the guy, I am not condemning him - seems to me to be entirely too nonideological for his role.
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I think this was quite deliberate. The Greens have always had to fight against a perception that they are radical ideologues completely out of touch with society or economics, so Di Natale helps present a much different image. Whether or not that will succeed in winning over people from the middle ground remains to be seen.

I don't know if Christine Milne got an entirely fair run, but any successor to Bob Brown was going to be judged harshly and she had the misfortune to lead her party during a period of especially virulent misogyny in political discourse, Gillard being just the most prominent victim.

There's an awful lot in common between Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, and I think the Liberals will come to rue this era. In a different way to the long Abbott reign, it is only putting off the day of reckoning (at least part of why they're struggling so much is that important sections of the front bench are still the Howard c-team, if slightly less so than two months ago. And the backbench are the Howard d-team, they're like the secular version of John Paul II's college of cardinals). That doesn't help the rest of us though. Still holding out for a minority Labor government as the better-than-nothing stopgap for the next few years.
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I think we're at a very interesting juncture here. Turnbull's consciously toning down the attack dog approach to government in recognition that what worked for Abbott in opposition made for a poor administration, but if Turnbull loses the next election will his methods endure or will they be seen as a similar failure? The other big development where we won't know for a while yet whether it has a positive or negative influence is Turnbull crafting a more small-l liberal cabinet. There's a clear tension within the Libs, with the backbench increasingly populated by far-right crazies, especially of the conservative religious variety, and will Turnbull break or enbolden them?

I'm also increasingly convinced we won't see any Senate voting reform before the next election, so the crossbench will become even more a confused and confusing mess.
 
I don't think Colonel Sanders would be so out of place in the Labor Left, I think there's a fair gulf between him and Corbyn. Whilst Sanders responds to red baiting with more red baiting, Corbyn rejects it entirely.
 
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