Straya thread part 5 - scallops and slippery dips

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
What the hell is going on in my Southern Hemisphere homeland, eh?
 
Eh? Who said anything about connection? It was more of a rhetorical question. You don't see Australia in the news all over the world for this kind of stuff that often.
 
Australia's relationship/self-projection to the rest of the world is weird. On the one hand, we have a tradition of independence and self-reliance (however untrue) and wouldn't mind staying out of - or not being responsible for - certain tensions and unpleasantnesses. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with a massive ego that wants to be seen as powerful and successful. Madly successful. When that's in sport it can be healthy, but it seeps into so many other things too.
 
We're a whole continent (or maybe that's been downgraded by the geographers), so it seems like we should be more important than we actually are.
 
We could be an important nation if we demonstrated ourselves to be leaders in a sort of progressive approach to nationalism, one that embraces secularism and isn't so obsessed with blind parochialism. We may be trendsetters of sorts. A little country that could.

We just appear quite backwards at the moment, but still not a big enough player in world issues for anyone to really take too much of an interest. If anyone was to pay enough attention, we'd probably appear quite stupid.
 
The brief moment of the world paying attention to Australia around G20 was bloody embarrassing.
 
What the hell is going on in my Southern Hemisphere homeland, eh?

Strange set of replies that followed this post, I can't really recall two things as fucked up as a gunman holding X many people hostage and killing two of them, then eight children being stabbed to death, happening within a week of each other before.

Not that I'm suggesting some bad shit or karmic rubbish is afoot, but it was a thoroughly fucking depressing month or so in news.
 
Queensland election called today for the 31st, and I hope it goes down to the wire. Speaking personally, I regard state politics as a little bit of a sideshow, but examples need to be made, on a range of issues, and a good old thumping is in order.

In reality, I expect a LNP government to survive like some endangered species much like South Australia's never-quite-gone Labor government; sans Campbell Newman most likely, replaced more than likely by Jeff Seeney or whoever doesn't throw up on election night.
 
I'm in New Zealand having too much of a good time/with too little wifi to bother with the Internet much! I was, however, interested to see this development. Newman's obviously desperate; he knows the election will be tough so he's hoping desperately to have blindsided the ALP enough to start the campaign strongly and gain an advantage - probably only a mild advantage, but even the slightest smidgen will be invaluable in a close election.

It seems likely to me that Newman will lose his seat, which will be hilarious and embarrassing. I can think of PMs/premiers losing their own seat when their party lost an election, but I can't think of an instance of the party leader losing their seat despite the party itself winning - anybody got any? I doubt the ALP can form government, given how few seats they hold right now. Regaining that many is going to require a very strong and atypical swing. So an LNP government without Newman at the helm seems the most likely outcome to me.

Also, the "I'm with stupid" thing today? Good god what a ridiculous response by the cops.
 
Newman's fall, if it comes, will neatly parallel his rise; the hubris of running from outside parliament as some sort of Napoleonic 'leader in exile'. Fuck him, and fuck the LNP.

In Labor's favour, all the people responsible for the U-turn on public asset (Qld Rail for instance) privatisation (absent which it's not impossible it would have secured yet another term) are now out of parliament. That was quite a broom that swept through.
 
I see Newman has indeed achieved an early boost in the polls, ugh.

Well, while we wait for Queensland to perhaps find a shred of sanity, shall we come up with suggestions of where to deport Cory Bernardi? I was thinking somewhere under Isis control until I realised he'd probably fit in really well.
 
The man is quite terrifying. Incidentally the only reason he's never reined in is that Tony Abbott really has no control over his own party. Labor should play on that more. His personal position is extraordinarily weak.

Oh and I see Brandis is back on the scent with his wet-dream of spying on everyone's dodgy Game of Thrones downloads; cause, you know, Charlie Hebdo.
 
I think the main reason the ALP hasn't played up the obvious ruptures within the Coalition is because it could - and likely would - come back to bite them very hard. Pointing out Coalition instability will only remind people more of ALP instability, and they seem determined to run from any impression of that. It would perhaps be better if the Greens very loudly banged the drum of Coalition instability; it would get at least some of the job done with fewer risks for the left.

I'm honestly a little impressed - read as: mortified - with Brandis, in that it takes serious incompetence and agenda-driven lunacy to make the Attorney-General a household name. I'd bet most Australians a year ago didn't know we had an Attorney-General or what the AG does. In fact I'd bet they still don't know the latter.
 
Not so much 'instability'... the Coalition gives at least a passable impression of stability, if you ignore Hockey and Turnbull and Bernadi and Pyne... and whoever... but rather, weakness.



George Brandis is the minister for tubes.
 
david-lettermanh2.jpg
 
That's my route! I went through less than an hour earlier. I wish I'd been on that tram though, to make off with some beer in the confusion. :lol:
 
Easily one of the more bizarre things I've heard happen to an Australian sportsman. And Allenby's not exactly an unknown as far as golf goes, and I hardly follow the sport.
 
Back
Top Bottom