..to see Advance Australia Wear..

...... Or should that be where?

It’s certainly not fair.

The fabric of this place is tearing, this week a huge sign of the threadbare nature of our Nation was exposed with the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the disgraceful behaviour of the four right wing State Premiers attempting to score political points off the backs of all those with disabilities and their carers.

What was exposed was not so much their “born-to-rule” contempt of the most disadvantaged in Australian society but signalling the unedifying, malevolent and destructive hubris that will be exhibited if Tony “the Rabbit” Abbott wins the next Federal election.

So confident are they that the conservatives will win the Federal election that the Premiers threw common-sense to the wind with “Big Bird” Baillieu  (Silvertail Incompetens) literally leading the pack. It is a salient point that Big Bird’s Government has a majority of one (1) in Parliament and it accurately provides insight into his political brains and “smarts”.

Most of them have since backed down; only the public disgust at their unethical behaviour changing their tune. All except Queensland Premier, Campbell “Benito the Clown” Newman, who was heard to utter this gem in relation to the NDIS and the Queensland economy. “I’m saying that if we fail to act in a way we are that Queensland would ultimately be the Spain of the Australian States”.

 He runs a State?

Pentland Hills near Bacchus Marsh Canon 5Dmk 2 w/ 70-200

Here in the Tardis State (Where all goes Backward) the cuts to Technical and Further Education are producing the obvious with campuses closing, staff being made redundant and courses being cut.

The largest manufacturer of Wind Turbines in regional Victoria has just shed 150 jobs as the restrictions on wind generator siting, bites. 

Un-Planning Minister Matthew “developer” Guy looks as though he has put his foot in it again by interfering in a $285,000,000 re-development of the Windsor Hotel.

Halim Group who own Windsor are not happy… think there is “something fishy” going on…. “sniff, sniff….not in the Tardis State, surely?

The bloke wants to be Premier, too.

The ABC is a media outlet you can generally trust to be accurate, fair and unbiased in its reporting.

Except for the Melbourne anchor of TV’s “7.30” current affairs program, Leigh Sales.

I don’t know if she is being mentored by Pru Goward or whether she is still paying her dues to Ch. 9 but her style seems to be increasingly opiniated/bitchy, “Prime Minister, how does the real Julia feel about these constant leadership mutterings?:  a thoroughly obnoxious sequence of  thin questions to retiring (ex-speaker) Harry Jenkins, masquerading as probing journalism (Federal Labor, and a gentleman, too) : and a promo presentation about government evidence presented in “Slippery Pete’s” trial that indicated the opposite of what was actually put forward in the bulletin. 

Is Sales’ a closet member of the I.P.A?   

It’s a form of presentation used by them; intersperse misleading, suggestive or wrong info amongst true stuff which the audience generally doesn’t notice but it chips away, chips away.

Content-wise she’s certainly no Kerry O’Brien and do we really need more of the Alan Jones/ Kyle Sandilands bogan approach to current affairs?

Is there a silver lining? 

Rainbow, Pentland hills, Canon 5D mk2 70-200

No!

Seeya Possums,

Shane

....celebrating.

G’day Possums,

Time for celebrations…. 

 

The Wombat’s No:1 daughter has arrived home after another year in France and a surprise gathering was organised for her close friends by daughter No:2 and one of the friends. Unbeknown to daughter No:2: she had been deliberately misinformed as to the correct time of No:1's arrival and was thus and duly happily surprised herself.

 

So the surprise was completed at Collingwoodworld    ta’s to  Layla for helping organise things.

  Second celebration was daughters No:1 tale that Wilde’s tomb at Pere Lachaise had not only been cleaned up but also protected from his “admirers”. I was quite appalled at its condition and the mentality behind the state of this stele when we saw it last year. 

 

I found this recent sample of the new “look” at

www.soundlandscapes.wordpress.com

The sculpture is made from Hoptonwood stone, a good architectural limestone that fairly well can absorb oils, inks and vegetation stains.   If you examine the image of the surface of the newly cleaned sculpture you will see that the “love-damage” is still apparent.

Each time this type of stone is cleaned the detail is abraded away, ultimately till nought is left.

I can more readily understand the raison d’etre of the Taliban dynamiting the ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan than I can the slow destruction of a memorial by you, of someone you allegedly like and admire.  Perhaps it’s a childishly plaintive cry in seeking identity or recognition?

 Politics 

Mr Rabbit gave his reply to the federal budget...... fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

He was defended by one Right Winger (“Boris” Kroger, power maker with a sweet tooth [whose "ex" btw has just been dumped from the Federal No1 place on the Senate ticket] ) as “…a Rhodes Scholar in economics..” to which a talk-back caller quipped,  “You mean roads, dontcha?” (Mr Rabbit is a keen cyclist). Jon Faine ABC.774

Same RW is also in a spat with a former colleague Peter Costello, but said Costello was “Aus’s greatest treasurer..) Uuuumm…. I know he spent like fury before every election and funded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $20 billion whilst refusing to acknowledge infrastructure, educational, medical, environment and development needs.

Allegedly a poll of business types when he first got the job suggested they thought him an idiot.

Costello’s timing (as noted in a prior post) of this latest infantile dummy spit is……. superb! Virtually wiped Mr Rabbit’s reply speech away…. Which is probably a good thing as he fired shots that were blanks.

(Another talk-back quip, “We need an Abbott and Costello in parliament!”)

Costello's seen walking from a plotting session with Kelly O Dwyer…..I want to know who was giving Bitchy lessons to whom?

Mr Rabbit says he wants Aussie kids to have better foreign language skills, whilst saying he’ll vote down a Labor budget initiative, “School Kids” bonus. Perhaps he’ll have a chat with Mr Kennett ( ex Liarbril premier, Victoria) and see where all the language teachers went after they were made redundant some 12 years ago?

Mr Rabbit also wants to abolish the mining tax  “ … will make Australia a better place to invest and let the world know that we don’t punish success”.

Hmmmmm… “….a better place to invest…”  Invest in?  or Invade? 

Hope I quoted a “typo”.

So, the world’s richest woman along with the biggest Queensland miner (6 billion-dollar-man) need tax breaks?

Mr Rabbit thinks that the Labor budget was… “…an ignoble piece of work ….. that will offend the intelligence of the Australian people”.

I rather think that the Liarbril Party is by design offensive; that their pre-selections catfights are the really ignoble things in the best of middle class, aspirational bad taste and that they seem conflicted as to their own meagre policy positions.

In the Tardis STATE of Victoria where everything goes backward, the Minister for Anti Corruption Andrew McIntosh….. looks, in a meeting, like he really shouldn’t be there ‘cause he’s really not interested and why should you be …oohhh this is boring….  But thinks the new guidelines for anti-corruption are fantastic.

Law Council and opposition  think they are Byzantine and designed to obfuscate!

He is also “unavailable” to discuss this matter with the redoubtable and attractive Josie Taylor on ABC “Victoria”.

Hello Mr Baillieu.

Poor Ms Josie T. then gets to interview the Baillieu appointed Governor of the Tardis State…….

Daughter No:1 could have opined … “at least Sarkozy had panache…” Mrs Wombat begins to snore…

so I’ll leave you Possums with these quotes from “The Age”…..

 “Mr Chernov replaces a man not afraid to speak out. Professor de Kretser used his own migrant experience to criticise the Howard government's citizenship test, and passionately warned of the consequences of climate change”.

 “But it is clear Mr Chernov will not be an activist. Asked if there were issues he would pursue, Mr Chernov said: ''I'll leave those things to the Premier. He decides the issues.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/our-new-governor-was-quite-the-wag-in-his-day-20110221-1b2hh.html#ixzz1uYRHeC7e

And because we're talking of dead things….. another  image from Pere Lachaise......

 and one from the beautiful Cistercian Abbey of Fontenay

cheers Petals,

Shane.