Comments on: Needs more green ink

by: ricsantos045

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:45:31 +0100

I have not checked in here for a while as I thought it was getting boring, but the last several posts are good quality, especially this one about nice reads, so I guess I will add you back to my everyday bloglist. You deserve it my friend. Just be careful in reading you might get sleep deprivation it can cause you being impaired from your daily routine. Check out also spine anatomy.

by: A late arrival

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:57:31 +0100

I would have thought the best evidence of Abbott's likely behaviour as Prime Minister would have been to look at his tenure as a Minister. Specifically, his decisions when his personal beliefs about abortion came into conflict with the advice of his department about the potential dangers of an abortion pill. Ignoring their advice, he refused to lift a ban on it.

The parliament (including many in his own party) saw this as such an abuse of power that they stripped him of that discretion.

by: speedweasel

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:02:02 +0100

As a militant anti-theist, (you know, one of those dangerous atheists who commit the crime of offering their opinions freely) I just want to avoid having government policy dictated by a credulous bigot armed with a pre-enlightenment (mis)education.

by: thornae

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:46:10 +0100

Wow.

Julia Giilard will NEVER have the insight into womens needs as Tony Abbott does

That's some Champagne Comedy, there. If I happened to be a stand-up comic sort of person, I'd be stealing that.

Anyway, best of luck with it all. Having affirmed I've left the country for more than six years, they won't let me participate any more, but I still observe with interest.

Personally, I'm hoping they'll do some data mining on the informal votes for this time. It'd be interesting to see how many were purely blank, as opposed to having some sort of message. My favourite reported informal ballot had written on it "Mark Latham is a tool, but he has a point."

by: Hewy

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:54:41 +0100

Dan, do you really believe that Abbott, if Prime Minister, would change abortion and divorce law? Seriously?

Obviously the climate change rant was out there, but probably on a par with the specious quotes of the original letter.

There's plenty of climate change sceptics in both major parties, but I think scepticism was basically a convenient tool for the opposition to use to prevent an ill thought out, virtually unexplainable, uncosted carbon tax (that unbelievably gave massive concessions to coal producers!!) at a time of economic uncertainty.

by: corinoco

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:22:00 +0100

I did not know that. I have always assumed it was because they couldn't spell. "Spelling is a decadent luxury with which the bourgeoisie classes oppress the proletariat." - ~~Vladimir Lenin~~ ~~ALP~~ Me. I just spelled bourgeoisie correctly first try! Thank you year-10 History teacher!

by: Daniel Rutter

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:59:19 +0100

How come it's labor and not labour?

When the party was formed in the late 19th century, they used the now-normal-in-the-UK-and-Australia "Labour" spelling, though apparently both spellings were common in the UK not very long before. (A lot of "simplified" US spellings are actually fossils that've stayed unchanged while the Commonwealth shifted to more complex spellings like "programme".) Then in 1912 they "modernised" the spelling to "Labor", to emphasise their connection with the burgeoning union movement in the USA.

by: rndmnmbr

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:35:38 +0100

Another American chiming in. Gods I hate politics. Down here on the bottom, it's all "Come join our tribe because THEIR tribe eats babies!" and people just lap it up. Then when it's all over, the winning party meets with lobbyists in some back room, and it's all "Remember that fifty million dollars we gave you to get yourself elected? Say thank you. Now, here are the issues we the corporations feel strongly about, here are the results we expect from your administration, here's the embarrassing political gaff we're holding over your head. Jump."

by: Popup

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:33:25 +0100

A more important question:

How come it's labor and not labour?
I thought Australians still sprinkled 'u's in their spelling like good little colonials?

by: Red October

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:32:52 +0100

It's a cold sort of comfort to see this kind of shit in foreign lands (I'm American), since every day I see how ineffectual my contry's political system is. At nearly every election we are handed a choice between people who will make a bunch of bad choices on certain issues, and leave other situations alone. Very infrequently do we get to vote for someone who will affect a positive change, and if that person even says they will make some sort of smart maneuver, it's a given that they will make three stupid ones on other, equally important issues. Politicians like bad choices because if you take some socially important issue (like healthcare, social programs, the economy, etc.) and say that you are going to fix it, but then enact policy that doesn't really fix it, the issue stays around for you to use again while people get the impression that you helped, or tried to, and only those small-minded idiots who stood against you are to blame for the issue staying a problem.

Dan, you hit the nail on the head about being presented with "no meaningful choice" -I can't recall ever voting FOR someone, and only twice for a measure (once a decrease in income tax, which failed, and once a decriminalization of marihuana, which passed) -but I frequently vote AGAINST some idiot who presents the greater margin of bad choices.