Straya thread part 4 - culling the chazzwazzers population

[intedomine]

http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbou.../overhaul-spencer-street-eyesore-savoy-tavern

It's back. I always thought that the building had a charm to it and am so happy it has been revived. Looked amazing when I walked past last Friday night. Haven't been inside yet but I really want it to become my new pre-Docklands sport meet-up point (instead of the Exchange which is really just a pokies venue)

That grey RMIT big block thing with the circles is indeed horrendous. I can imagine it increasingly looking worse as it becomes caked in dust and smog and stuff. A true eyesore.

 

[cobl04]

Interviewed Chris Taylor today. It was great, he was really cool. But Charlotte already knew everything he told me, and more.

 

[cobl04]

The Overhaul of a Spencer Street Eyesore –¬ The Savoy Tavern - Nightlife - Broadsheet Melbourne

It's back. I always thought that the building had a charm to it and am so happy it has been revived. Looked amazing when I walked past last Friday night. Haven't been inside yet but I really want it to become my new pre-Docklands sport meet-up point (instead of the Exchange which is really just a pokies venue)

We'll see.

Spoiler

The govt of Nauru owned it? WTF?

 

[Axver]

Huh, didn't realise the plans had actually come to fruition - it's evidently been longer than I thought since I went past the site.

Now if we can just restore some of the other bomb sites around the city (imagine a rejuvenated Argus building!) and stop the Palace being destroyed...

 

[Axver]

Just a little note for Kieran, recalling our recent discussion on states prone to lengthy single-party reigns. I've been doing some research today on Tasmanian politics, and I've found a reign to outdo Queensland Labour's 1915-1957 streak (with one three year gap). It turns out that Labour ruled Tasmania from 1934 to 1982, also with the exception of one three-year gap. 45 out of 48 years. Simply extraordinary.

Incidentally, the longest term a conservative government (be it a Liberal or predecessor) has ever achieved in Tasmania is seven years. They like their Labour down there. Will Hodgman probably shouldn't get too cosy.

 

[Slopsy]

Interviewed Chris Taylor today. It was great, he was really cool. But Charlotte already knew everything he told me, and more.

[whispers] I'm told outsourcing your article writing to me is very hip & cool

nah man he's such a cool dude and I'm heaps keen to read what you write!

 

[cobl04]

He really is, I was very struck by his personable air. Ripping bloke

 

[Slopsy]

Yeah for sure like he's so easygoing and will literally just talk all day about whatever! He's one of the most easy to talk to people I've ever encountered - the first time, I had to excuse myself first because I was literally gonna miss my train, and all the other times he's been so friendly and cool and yeah it's great!

 

[Kieran McConville]

Just a little note for Kieran, recalling our recent discussion on states prone to lengthy single-party reigns. I've been doing some research today on Tasmanian politics, and I've found a reign to outdo Queensland Labour's 1915-1957 streak (with one three year gap). It turns out that Labour ruled Tasmania from 1934 to 1982, also with the exception of one three-year gap. 45 out of 48 years. Simply extraordinary.

Incidentally, the longest term a conservative government (be it a Liberal or predecessor) has ever achieved in Tasmania is seven years. They like their Labour down there. Will Hodgman probably shouldn't get too cosy.

Wow, now that I did not know. I've got to guess that the relatively tiny electorate must have a bit to do with it. Tasmania is hardly more than a really massive shire, in some ways.

And it's funny too because although Labor had had a good run in the last decade and a half it was such a bumpy ride between the first guy, Jim Bacon, dying and handing over to a successor who I would describe as barely Labor at all, and then the revolving door of whoever (seriously, I'd lost count, the last one was like 29 years old wasn't she?).

Actually both SA and TAS Labor have had a long run post-1990s without ever seeming particularly successful or popular, just lucky.

 

[Axver]

Wow, now that I did not know. I've got to guess that the relatively tiny electorate must have a bit to do with it. Tasmania is hardly more than a really massive shire, in some ways.

And it's funny too because although Labor had had a good run in the last decade and a half it was such a bumpy ride between the first guy, Jim Bacon, dying and handing over to a successor who I would describe as barely Labor at all, and then the revolving door of whoever (seriously, I'd lost count, the last one was like 29 years old wasn't she?).

Actually both SA and TAS Labor have had a long run post-1990s without ever seeming particularly successful or popular, just lucky.

Yeah, if I've learnt anything from my research into sub-national government in New Zealand, small electorates really do have a tendency to extremes, either to incredible polarisation beyond all proportion or emphatic one-party domination. I suppose the other reason why Labour's been so historically strong in Tasmania is that it has perhaps closer ties to business than elsewhere, allowing it to look as pro-business as the Libs while also looking pro-worker. It's been fairly cosy with the forestry industry. They also seem to have benefited from Tassie conservatives being really fucking backwards; the Nationalist Party there was never replaced by the UAP and survived (as government until 1934, then opposition) right up until 1945, when it was absorbed by the new Liberal Party.

The epic 1934-82 reign of Labour was pretty rocky for much of that period too, so like the recent sixteen year reign it had periods of minority government. They had a thirty-seat parliament in the fifties, resulting in a 15-15 deadlock at the 1955 election - and, interestingly, when one of Labour's 15 defected to the Liberals in 1956, the premier actually got a dissolution of parliament from the governor. The result? Another 15-15 deadlock! It kept Labour in power though. Their reign may have been long in Tassie, but it was sometimes precarious.

 

[Axver]

Also, despite how intense the coverage of the Tasmanian Legislative Council was last year during the gay marriage debate, I had no idea how bizarre it is. Almost all of its members - both present and historically - are independents. It has never been controlled by a single political party. Obviously many members have unofficial/former ties with the ALP or the Libs, but you just don't normally see this sort of thing after the 1890s.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Also, despite how intense the coverage of the Tasmanian Legislative Council was last year during the gay marriage debate, I had no idea how bizarre it is. Almost all of its members - both present and historically - are independents. It has never been controlled by a single political party. Obviously many members have unofficial/former ties with the ALP or the Libs, but you just don't normally see this sort of thing after the 1890s.

That is quite odd. To a certain extent (even as I start this sentence the 'Motoring Enthusiasts Party' springs to mind) I think we should see more of it. A senate with a healthy swag of Peter Andren/Tony Windsor figures (and yes, I know all of those were actually in the lower house) sounds like just the ticket to me.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The epic 1934-82 reign of Labour was pretty rocky for much of that period too, so like the recent sixteen year reign it had periods of minority government. They had a thirty-seat parliament in the fifties, resulting in a 15-15 deadlock at the 1955 election - and, interestingly, when one of Labour's 15 defected to the Liberals in 1956, the premier actually got a dissolution of parliament from the governor. The result? Another 15-15 deadlock! It kept Labour in power though. Their reign may have been long in Tassie, but it was sometimes precarious.

And that's why... you don't yell call the voters' bluff. Contra Murdoch and all the rest of them, the 2010 course of action Federally, particularly by the major independents, was exactly correct.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Regarding the WA election do-over, I am a tad suspicious about this 'pre polling security breach'. First last September's hiccup and now this? Really? My impression was that the Australian Electoral Commission historically has had a peerless reputation, locally and internationally.

How crazy-paranoid of me might it be to picture some LNP stooge on the payroll of the AEC conveniently stuffing shit up (EDIT: I guess it sounds like the people actually handling the provision of voting material to the aged care facility were RAAF or something, not actually AEC staff)? Just to fan a little more that popular narrative of how guvvermint can't get anything right. The public comments of one or two Liberal candidates struck me as too cute by half.

Ok, that's my conspiracy theory cap off now. Since I don't really go in for that stuff unless it seems compelling.

-------------------------

PS. got to chuckle at the solemn newsreaders passing on that tidbit that the new election will cost $3 million. Big whoop. Who gives a shit. Three million dollars is nothing. The cost of every ex-parliamentarian's pension is nothing (while admittedly it does not always make for great PR). Do people have any conception of the scale of a modern government budget?

 

[Axver]

Half the time I wonder if the military is pretty much just the Lib payroll anyway. They sure vote that way.

I love how Palmer's already running off his mouth about this.

And no, if recent budget hysteria is anything to go by, people definitely have no conception whatsoever of the scale of a modern government budget, or for that matter how most government finance works.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Did you know that our debt is BILLIONS??? OMG imagine if mum and dad's debt was like that, they'd have to work it out at the kitchen table, cut back on food, sell the kids into slavery or something... THE HORRORS

 

[Axver]

This fuckhead is #1 on the ALP's WA ticket, ahead of Louise Pratt: Labor's WA Senate candidate Joe Bullock says his party can't be trusted | World news | theguardian.com

Safe to say he's the one whose last name should be Pratt.

The really extraordinary thing is that this speech is from LAST YEAR but only reported now. I'm told by a colleague that the speech is not hard to find on Google either, so it's remarkable no journalist had reported it yet (investigative journalism, your pulse is fading) and you'd fucking hope the ALP 1. knew, 2. was prepared for this, and 3. has a strategy to neutralise it. But unleashing it literally the day before polls really hurts. Can't even disendorse the fucker, I think.

We were having a debate at work on who leaked it. The obvious assumption is the Libs, especially as the ALP is polling well. But another one of my colleagues - who, it must be said, is a member of an ALP Right faction and has a serious bee in his bonnet about the Greens - reckons the Greens have done it to try to push as many people as possible on the ALP Left away from Labour (and its big bad rightwing wankers) to the Greens. He may actually have a point. I've been very busy today so I'm not sure where the leak first appeared, but I was joking that if it first appeared in a News Limited publication it was the Libs, but if it first appeared in the Guardian it was the Greens.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Amusing to see Clive today preemptively declare no-confidence in the outcome (whatever it may be; yeah, right, sure).

The second explanation about that ALP candidate (it might have been the Greens) seems plausible enough. Doesn't explain what the guy is doing on the ALP's ticket in the first place, though. You expect this sort of stuff from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party or Katter's Katterish Party.

 

[cobl04]

THIS IS WHY I FUCKING LOVE TWITTER. The replies to this are fucking hilarious, just like the responses to David Cameron from Rob Delaney et al. I added one of my own

https://twitter.com/TonyAbbottMHR/status/453820001292521472

 

[Kieran McConville]

Sir Major-General Viscount Tony Abbott Raises Pension Age to 79, Conscripts Army of Seniors to Row Out Into Indian Ocean for Plane That Went Missing

 

[Kieran McConville]

"I've just made a huge mistake."

 

[Axver]

Brian Harradine died today: Former senator Brian Harradine - the blueprint for the power of one

I may disagree with his conservative Catholic streak, but he was also a welcome thorn in Howard's side - and his refusal to support the GST possibly killed the Democrats.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The Democrats killed themselves. A little sad, really, but there it is. I agree that he maybe gave them some rope, as Andrew Bartlett had it.

Not to get all meta, but the Greens might be the first modern minor federal party who are not essentially a breakaway. The Democrats detached from the Liberal Party and drifted vaguely left (along with a few old Liberals, hello Malcolm Fraser), the DLP detached from the ALP and drifted steadily right to the point where they attempted, briefly, a merger with the Country Party.

 

[dazzledbylight]

g'day mates,

anyone want to head to lower New York State/USA (but north of nyc - the 'burbs, or semi-countryside) to look for a lost wallaby (escaped it's outdoor pen)



on a more serious note


?Typhoon Ita? /Queensland Hope no one you know is affected!

oh and with all those politiccal musing above-- is Peter Garrent still in politics?

(bring back The 'Oils, mate! )

 

[dazzledbylight]

it seems like mabybe some of you in eastern'straya may get a big partial, or even an annular solar eclipse this April 29 !

I couldn't find the time of it, tho. So keep your eyes on the news.
An annular one the moon is not quite in the distance to completely cover the sun....So you must use proper eye protection ... but you get a bright orange-yellow ring with the right filter.
One type makes the image grayish-blue.(Blah)

Hope some of you are there or within easyish traveling distance!

 

[Kieran McConville]

I can't stop staring at the sun.

 

[dazzledbylight]

 

[Alisaura]

That annular eclipse will be partially visible in Melbourne close to sunset on Tuesday... I don't get a good view to the west at work but I'll try to get somewhere I can take a look.

Btw Dazz, tropical storms like Ita are called cyclones in our part of the world.

 

[dazzledbylight]

ooooo good luck ali! check your news that morning beforehand AND be careful!
i think have to try and see if i can follow this on line!

ah.... cyclones...ok
i used the trop strom name because that was the reference

oh i know why term "cyclone" was extra "dinging" in my head...
In Brooklyn- Coney Island's Lunar Park is the famous wooden roller coaster called The Cyclone

 

[Kieran McConville]

As far as I can tell it came and went. Then again, 'around sunset'... it's not like I can see the sun for the hills at sunset anyway, so a marginal dimming of the day right when it gets dark anyway is not exactly a show-stopper...