...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

...down the gurgler

Down the gurgler…

Shane reading the new one...

 We have shot some more ballet stuff... here are some outakes

Emma, Gypsy

and this send-up by William....

So you think you can dance?

and after the formal shot...

Classically...not!

Thanks to all for your good work ...

Wombat Droppings

John Roskam Head “Coot-With-Queer-ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (IPA) admitted, that he knew of no evidence that privatisation of the State Electricity Commission (unusual, him not knowing everything), was in any way to blame for the health disaster engulfing Morwell from the open-cut fire that has been burning for a month.

Many years ago I put a friend in contact with economic/political journo Kenneth Davidson who was writing pieces on the poor economic results from Private/Public Partnerships and the dubious benefits of Privatisation of State assets.  This friend an ex-electrical fitter with the SEC, had taken a “package” when it was privatised and then returned ten years later to do similar work contracting across the private/foreign owned electricity suppliers had expressed how shocked he was at the poor state of the infrastructure he found after starting back.

Incompatibility of equipment between sub-stations and poor maintenance from where the first American owners had literally stripped out their profits before on-selling the business to the present Asian owners.
Living rurally, the burrow used to have one or two blackouts a year under the SEC now it’s 3-4; the last being a few weeks ago when we were without power for 13 hours, caused by a transformer fire on a major highway. The most memorable “outage’ was one Summer 5 years ago when our power was fluctuating wildly. We rang our local electrician who had just re-wired the kitchen, and he asked us to go outside and check the pole that serviced our property. We did and observed its transformer crackling and sending showers of sparks down to the dry stubble below. That day would become known as “Black Saturday,” we rang the electricity supplier and told them of the fluctuation and they said it would be four or five days before they could get to us, we then told them about the sparks and the crackling and they arrived in 25 minutes. They also intimated that we should be discreet about mentioning this episode.

Privatisation is for private profit not public service. The Morwell fires have been worse than they should have been because the site has not been re-habilitated as it should have been and its fire suppression infrastructure has been stripped out.

It is interesting to note that it will be the taxpayer, the public who will probably “foot-the-bill” for this fiasco not the privatised owner.

From John Roskam’s Bio: “Working for Don Hayward [the Victorian Education Minister 1992-96] and David Kemp [the Federal Education Minister 1996-01]. You can’t shut several hundred schools [in Victoria] and reduce teacher numbers by 10 per cent without sophisticated leadership and deep, intellectual commitment to policy.” 

“Sophisticated leadership”? “Intellectual commitment”? In order to cripple State education ? To replace language teachers with satelite dishes and T.Vs, then cramming 100 primary students into a single class? Sophisticated, my arse!  If that farce of an exercise (which lasted barely three months) was intellectually sound, Roskam really should seek clinical help. Then his fellow “Queer-coot”, James Paterson pops up with the hysterical notion that Western Capitalism is better at protecting the environment than a “Command” economy! Psst, James heard of Bhophal? Heard of  Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez, Libby Montana, Gulf of Mexico, and of course you’ve heard of Agent Orange?

Welcome to the parallel universe of the Tobacco, Murdoch and Rinehart mining sponsored IPA.

5000 Qantas workers are to lose their jobs as the airline spirals to earth and four of its board, over four years, waltz away with $54,000,000.00 in re-numeration.

Joe “Cereal/SPC/Holden Killer” Hockey and “Rabbott-the-Hun” are telling us “the Age of Entitlement is over….”

Abbott claimed expenses entitlements for six months in 2013 of $474,707.15. 
Remember Tony Abbott rejected a cash injection at SPC citing workers entitlements are excessive (at just $116,427 in 2013)....

One of the curious benefits of Abbott’s and Co’s ranting about wages and entitlements is to highlight the 150% over common wages executives get…………. not really something they want to have too much made of…except of course Gina “Our Biggest-Miner” Rinehart who has beached herself again to spout more drivel about wages and conditions not being close enough to third world levels for there to be a level playing field.

 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/07/gina-rinehart-wants-australian-thatcherism-but-do-we-want-to-become-northern-britain

And now a nice little compare and contrast …the first is Liarbril harridan Senator Michaela Cash http://youtu.be/pXchm5QOyyU and Greens Senator ScottLudlum http://youtu.be/dtqrfiEV8Gs

Michaela Cash to me, epitomises much of the rank nastiness of the Liarbrils whilst you can make your own mind up about the Greens Scott Ludlum

Everything is “… having a conversation…” no it’s not it’s telling you what you’re gunna hear, right!

Cheers Possums

Shane