...Spring is Boing

G'day Petals,

Wombat Kinder 2 and I took a trip to the State Library in the city t'other day to see an exhibition of colonial artist William Strutt. 

"Black Thursday" and "Bushrangers on St.Kilda Rd" being amongst the visual descriptions of colonial Melbourne's life, manners and costumes he meticulously recorded.

State Library, Bunyip and St Joan.

Strutt's drawings are delightful and although their anecdotal detail is engaging, one of the Bushrangers being I believe, local lad Capt. Moonlight, the paintings are less memorable because of their histrionic Victorian sentiment.  We followed these with a wander through the building and its display of the history of printing with some very beautiful examples of Audubon and Gould illustrations as well as the more salacious covers of pulp fiction from the early 60's.

State Library Reading Room

Wombat Kinder2 is a keen dressmaker who wanted to peruse some vintage material so we trotted off to the Mitchell Building in Lonsdale St which has a startling Art Deco foyer only to find the material shop closed but after meeting up with Mrs Wombat we tried the Phillips Shirt Factory with more success. One of the last Australian firms to manufacture shirts, Phillips' has a huge amount of material and clothing for sale in a visually interesting but derelict workshop.

Phillips Shirts

I was surprised to see an industrial material cutter that was manufactured in Oz.... and found that they still are... how rare!

Time for a drink ... so we climbed through a very visually busy and quite disorienting series of floors to a rooftop bar in Hardware Lane. It was interesting to note that the "busyness" became more muted and spaced the higher we went so I think it would be correct to assume the artist started on the lower levels.

Things then took a bridal turn.

 

Triple Grooms with Fries

Leaving Hardware Lane I discovered three groomsmen who had temporarily escaped the focus of the photographers and were snacking before the reception at a fast food place.... then the vintage cars with sundry drivers and others of the wedding party all lined up having a smoke and.... Voila... the full frou-frou shebang at the old Post office!

The Princess Carriage, by-the-way is not from this bridal party, it's tourist transport. 

More important frou-frou happened this week with the return of Federal Parliament after a four month break and Truffles-in-a-Muddle's near death election result.

Ex Freedom Boy and IPA clone, Timmy Twat Wilson teared-up during his Maiden speech. Which will probably be the last time he will do anything in that place which seems genuine. Irrelevant but genuine, he avoided calling himself a hypocrite in supporting the wasteful $160,000,000.00 plebiscite and repeal of 18C so that the minority group he's a member of will be vilified and treated unequally for years more to come.

It's no wonder then when "intelligence" like this abounds at The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe that one of the IPA's past directors, Roger Neave has tipped a bucket on them and put on record his disgust at how far-right the organisation has become. In an interview for The Saturday Paper, Neave charts the demise of this once liberal group and says at article's end that, "...because of the surge of the right in the demonising of refugees/asylum seekers, of "children overboard" and (that) we imprison them...I want my pride back in being an Australian." 

Hmmm... too late methinks!

 

The Mitchell Building

Bestiality Bernardi has been gathering signatures of other feeble-minded fascists (when not asleep on the job) to repeal 18C and who, excited by their newfound solidarity are ignoring Truffles-in-a-Muddle's exhortations not to fragment what's looking like a terminal adventure for Ruling Rabble Mk2.

Ex IPA mediocrity, Wunderkind Paterson having been in parliament for fully five minutes and who probably wouldn't know truth if he fell over it, is one of the worst offenders in seeming not to realise that destabilising an already rickety rust-bucket like the S.S. Liarbril may have consequences beyond his instant gratification in seeking notoriety.

Phillips Shirts

Bestiality has also been having a fine time railing against the poor judgment of Sammy Halal Dastyari who had a Chinese business type (with links to Chinese Gov) pay for some trips and a couple of bills. In his muddled incoherent tirade, Bestiality really only exposed what a simple minded buffoon he appears to others and even to his some of his own side, to be. An intellectual pygmy would probably have made a better fist of it but at least Bestiality looked happy in his role of chief assailant; his Easter Island faux impassiveness occasionally breaking into smirking as he found pleasure in firing blanks at an embarrassed Dastyari.

Then on Day two Senator Jacquie Lambie rounded on Bestiality with this: "I think it is important to make this point around the debate about Australian political donations to the Chinese communist government. Liberal senator Cory Bernardi lecturing this parliament and displaying mock outrage regarding Labor senator Sam Dastyari and Chinese political donations is like an angry prostitute lecturing us about the benefits of celibacy.

And before I receive unfair criticism from the sex workers, I apologise to them profusely in comparing them to senator Bernardi. I know that is a really terrible low down thing to do because I can tell you prostitutes are far more honest, sincere, humane, compassionate and better bang for buck than senator Bernardi will ever be able to deliver."  

So there!

Silly Sammy Halal's proto-Liarbril  financial blunderings managed to divert attention from the ICAC findings in NSW where two Liarbril shonks will probably be referred to police for charging and Arfuh Da Spiv Sinodinas got a Scottish verdict from "not sufficient evidence," proving that early onset dementia, temporarily, is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Funky Art in bar  Hardware Lane

Horse-Shite Cormann vibble-vobbled with shonky figures as he and his innumerate treasurer Scummo Morrison attempted to bully Labor into supporting their 2014 budget. It's hard to know whether like Scummo's predecessor they too, think that cruel, anti-social, neo-liberal penny pinching is a sure way of getting to Washington and double dip at entitlements or either that "thinking" was never really part of this fiscal equation.

According to Rabid-the-Hun and Chwissie The Whyning-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect, Pyne their  well regarded whistle-blower and "Lion-of-the-Union-Movement," Kathy Jackson, has finally been referred to court by police on 70 charges of being a very naughty and selfish gel with $1,400,000.00 of her Union's money.

Craig Thompson was not heard to respond and is probably certain not to ask for visiting rights in the future!

 

The Bride to Be, Hardware Lane.

I watched Parliament question-time on the first day back and it was interesting to note the body language and facial expressions on the Ruling Rabble minions behind the front bench. I think they of the Ruling Rabble Mk 2 know they're well and truly f****d!

An address for those interested....

Phillips Shirts 274 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne VIC 3000.

Hoo-roo, Possums,

Shane

..as the Sharks circle

The Sharks are circling

G’day Possums,

And… just when you thought it safe to go back in the water this IPA led loopy rabble are having another attempt at destroying one of the most effective and affordable health systems in the world.

That this obscene, mongrel lot are determined to make Australia a fully “Free-Market” Gulag is now beyond all doubt. 
Their first 500 Days has seemed like 500 years....

Troubling times ahead, Petals.

But first some more Ballet stuff...

Ballet Theatre Australia, 2014 Performance

Wombat Droppings

....or the chronicle of Australia's inexorable slide into Fascism.

A new report finds exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian taxpayers by as much as $US3.5 billion ($4 billion) every year in the form of direct spending and tax breaks…..

…..but we have to pay more to see the Doctor

$45 billion a year just on superannuation tax breaks. Who gets the bulk of that? The wealthy. (And it certainly makes the $7.5 billion spent on Newstart look paltry in comparison)….

But we can’t afford Medicare.

Medicare, will this year cost us $20 billion

$18 billion in lost revenue over the next four years from the abolition of the ‘mining tax’,        $1.6 billion of that was “purely a gift from Mr Abbott to the miners”.                                Scrapping the mining tax cost us $5.3 billion and who gets that? It will go mainly to the biggest mining companies:

Then there’s the $2.4 billion a year the government gives back to property investors

But we can’t afford a Public Health system  ….….because Joe “Cereal-Toyota-Killer” Hockey thinks that we will soon all live to be 150 and how can we pay for that?

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-raises-prospect-of-australians-living-until-150-to-justify-budget-cuts-20150119-12t3m1.html

That Hockey is the country’s Treasurer is more than a little perturbing.

Free Speech Is Brandised  again with Mandy ”Il Patrone” Vanstone lauding the efforts of “Blot-on-the-Landscape” Bolt and “Bookshelves-for-Bogon-Bigots” Brandis to repeal 18C and lower everyone’s public speaking standards to the levels of that of the Liarbril Party.

Apropos this; John Lord (AIM) asked,
“Why is it then that the likes of Abbott, Bolt, Jones, Brandis,  Bernardi and others need to go beyond common decency, and defend others who cannot express themselves without degenerating into hate speech?”

The answer is simple really. 

Because hate is all they have.

They are cruel because they lack courage.

They are not progressive as that implies creative thinking.

They are not builders as that implies constructive thought.

And they are not Democrats as that implies an acceptance of others.

They hate, destroy and wreck because they are limited in real intelligence and talent and jealously despise those with that humanity.

They do not understand the complexity of humanity, hence their world is reduced to slogans and pre-pubescent “Libertarianism.”

Timmy “Twat-$7,500.00-Freedom-Man” Wilson says he is going to “….advance the Government’s freedom agenda…”

I wonder where he found it?

Ohh, that right, it was in the “How to Govern” handbook written by the “Coot’s-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (aka IPA), Timmy's old employer.

Then there was this nice essay on Class….

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/december/1385816400/tim-winton/c-word

Rabid-the-Hun

And then this on how this shambolic Government has made Oz at 44^th in the world rankings for internet speeds. The mess they have made with the NBN is not only going to cost Australia intellectually and productively but also financially when it has to be upgraded at huge cost in 10 years time. That these mongrels did this to satisfy The Ugly American, “Phone-Hacker” Murdoch’s interests rather than further the capacity of the nation speaks worlds of their real but small-minded agenda.

http://sortius.net.au/no-it-really-is-turnbulls-fault/

Not a pretty picture is it?

I'll leave the last word to Samuel Clemens

Hoo-roo, Possums,
Shane.