Worse and worser

Senator Eric Abetz holds forth on the Rudd Government’s taxpayer-funded advertising blitz to sell its super resources tax:

“They have now done worse than we have done by setting aside their own guidelines.”

True, the government’s actions in this are quite troubling, but is it really ‘worse’ than having no guidelines at all? The Howard Government had an abysmal record of hitting on the taxpayer to advertise their policies. And the government’s “setting aside their own guidelines” is redolent of Howard’s ministerial code of conduct, and how meaningless that became.

More than anything, however, this all seems to be about Kevin Rudd. His government will become paralysed if it can’t neutralise the ‘KRudd’ factor... or jettison it.

 
UPDATE 30 MAY: ABC TV’s Insiders program this morning aired video footage of Kevin Rudd campaigning in 2007 in which he emphatically states he would resign if, as Prime Minister, he failed to honour his promise to clean up taxpayer-funded government advertising.

Kevin Rudd therefore should now do the honourable thing and fall on his sword — unless he can successfully take the ‘Abbott defence’, on the grounds that his off-the-cuff statement in 2007 was not a “carefully prepared, scripted remark.”

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Andrew Bolt’s lost post

The following is a post Andrew Bolt had apparently “dopped” but which has somehow been leaked to this blog:

In a rare moment of honest reflection, I thought I might take some time out to thank people like Jacob of the AppliedH blog for holding up to scrutiny some of my more deranged output.

For instance, most recently Jacob exposed my shonky claim that Kevin Rudd “gave aid to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.”

None of you, my faithful readers, challenged me on this, and I thought I’d gotten clean away with it until, with jaw agape, I read Jacob’s searing critique on his blog (which I secretly, and with trepidation, read daily).

By the way, even if one of you had challenged me on that barefaced lie, a retraction and apology would of course always be out of the question. On my blog you’ll never read anything like: “Thanks to reader Joe Bloggs for pointing out my gaping error.” It just wouldn’t gell with the flow of my obvious genius.

Despite myself, I have to admit that in my frenzies I do tend to tear apart anything to hand that represents restraint, order or the related discipline of reason. I just can’t help myself, so it’s important that people like Jacob are out there, somewhere, calling me to account on this rubbish you all devour so willingly. But fortunately for me, AppliedH is Australia’s least-read blog.

To my legions of readers who’ve helped make my blog “Australia’s most-read political blog,” I’d like to try to tell you how very sorry I am for having sucked you all in with my manic bids for more attention, cash and power.

Here goes. The fact is I’m not very sorry at all. You’ve only yourselves to blame for falling for the heady brew of lies, half-truths and populist cant that I retail here so shamelessly. Truly it’s said that there’s one born every minute, and boy have I struck the mother lode.

I’d like to be able to tell you I will delete my blog and somehow earn myself an honest living, but even I have to acknowledge the bleeding obvious fact that I’m simply not capable of it.

Thanks Andy, I’m genuinely touched.

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(UPDATE - This title has been re-itemised, and the updated pre-originals drop bottomed to the post.)

A very strange rewriting of the Bolt blog:

UPDATE - This item as [sic] been retitled, and the original pre-updates post dopped [sic] to the bottom.

Bolt also “dopped” a later post featuring a rather fetching image of former PM John Howard toasting our present troubles with Rudd, with (from memory) the caption:

“How’s that change you wanted working out?!”

Thus has Bolt ditched the cardinal rule of ‘blogging’ which requires the preservation of ‘the record.’ Bloggers all may now freely rewrite their histories with a free conscience. Thanks Andy!!

Now’s probably a good time to switch-off your computer.

 
UPDATE  (IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT)

That Howard toast to the people who have forsaken His Reverence has at last reappeared a mere 6 hours after Andy pulled it.

Never let it be said that the Australian Right would ever delight in the supposed misfortune of ordinary Australians.

 
PRE POSTDATE X

Please refer to the previous two updates which follow.

 
POST PRE UPDATE 2

This is to alert readers that there might have been an important update, but I carelessly dopped it.

 
PRE POST UPDATE 2

Yep, this post is still in the same place I left it. Just checking.

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Sionara sci-whaling

The Australian Government has just announced it will initiate legal action to end Japan’s ‘scientific whaling’ activities in the Southern Ocean.

This announcement can only be:

• an attempt to distract your attention from pink batts, the ETS, the resource tax, and what have you;
• an attempt to buy the votes of Muslim, African and non-whaling nations in Rudd’s quixotic bid to win a UNSC seat; and
• an attempt to gratify Rudd’s manic vanity.

It goes without saying that this announcement has nothing whatever to do with long-standing, avowed Government policy on Japan’s ‘scientific whaling’ activities in the Southern Ocean.

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Transport Trivia Friday

Presenting milestones in Victoria’s transport landscape...

This week: 1977

February	Jacob begins driving (legitimately), coinciding with steady increase in demand for courses in defensive driving.
December	Stage 1 of the Eastern Freeway (Hoddle Street to Bulleen Road) opens.

• Source: Transport Research and Policy Analysis Bulletin, Autumn 2010

Next week: 1978 ! !

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In Bolt’s dreams, Rudd gives aid and succour to Mugabe

Almost forgot to mention, but in a column yesterday Andrew Bolt claims the Rudd government “gave aid to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.”

What’s this about then?

Well, apparently the Australian government’s foreign aid body AusAID has committed $5.5 million for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which helps farmers develop sustainable farming practices.

AGRA is based in Kenya — not Zimbabwe, as was wrongly asserted by Steve Lewis, a fellow-traveler of Bolt’s whose falsehoods he now retails. AGRA operates its programs all over Africa, including Zimbabwe.

How appalling appropriate that the Australian government should try to help Zimbabwean farmers mitigate the potentially disastrous consequences of Mugabe’s land ‘reforms’ ! !

In his frenzies, Bolt tears apart anything to hand that represents restraint, order or the related discipline of reason.

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Bolt’s frenzies continue

Yep, as unremarkable as it may seem, Andrew Bolt just ploughs on and on with his reckless cant defending the abuse by Israel of Australian passports:

The question is, if we supply fake passports to the spies of friendly countries, why not supply some to Israel?

Well, why not “supply some” to Dubai as well, for that matter?

To Bolt, it really does seem to be that simple. He’d have the things raining like confetti.

In his frenzies, he tears apart anything to hand that represents restraint, order or the related discipline of reason.

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Industrial disease

Suicides among industrial workers in China are occurring at an alarming rate.

In particular, a plant in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen operated by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Group (which manufactures consumer electronics such as iPhones and iPads) has just recorded its ninth suicide this year.

Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou offered the following “as he bowed at a press conference”:

“I offer my sincerest apologies to society, the entire public, all our employees and their families because we had no way of preventing these things from happening. Will it happen again? From a logical, scientific standpoint, I don’t have a grasp on that.”

Apart from improving general working conditions, one wonders have they considered maybe an immediate 15% pay rise might help perk everybody up a bit?

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thoughtbumble

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The back-flipping Bolt politburo

A post at the Andrew Bolt blog today gets off to a rip-snorting start:

When [Kevin Rudd is] not expelling Israeli diplomats to appease Muslim countries...

Gosh, and most of us thought the expulsion was in the way of a slap on the wrist for the officially sanctioned abuse by Israel of official Australian documents. Oh yes, we know everybody does it. But when you get caught doing it in the course of an officially sanctioned murder plot in yet a third country, well then some meaningless, token reprisal is only to be expected.

Yesterday Bolt thought the expulsion was “abother [sic] typical piece of Rudd spin, designed this time to distract attention from his mining tax disaster.”

But today Bolt seems to think it’s all about “Kevin Rudd’s desperate campaign for a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.” Which, needless to say, is all because of the PM’s “vanity”. (Mirror mirror...)

What Bolt may think tomorrow is anyone’s guess, but we can be certain it will all hang on some real or imagined failing of the execrable Rudd.

Back in late April, when Bolt was raging against the British Met Office and sundry civil aviation authorities for the closure of European airspace due to the volcanic ash emergency, one of his readers commented:

Please please please let these idiots get sued and lose!

While most of us gave up praying to the Wish Fairy before we entered adolescence, the evidence to date suggests at any rate that the Wish Fairy was not listening as that plaintive cry rose to the heavens.

Although it’s not clear just whom that reader wanted to “get sued” — whether the Met Office, or civil aviation authorities as a bloc, or all of the above, and perhaps you for good measure — it really didn’t matter, you see, as long as someone gets their arse sued.

The Bolt politburo wishes it so.

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Uncertainty alarm

Prepare for falling bits of sky...

“The world is now a very uncertain and dangerous place for investors exposed to any type of risk.”

• Peter Ryan, business editor, The World Today

And just like those poor possums, don’t we all crave the security of not being exposed to risk?

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