There’s a lot I hate more than do-gooders believing they’re doing you a favour by asking, demanding and nagging you to stop smoking, but this takes the Boston Bun: yesterday in London a group of out-of-work actors (or rather, too proud to put their talent to good use – really: any idiot can act like a zombie, as evidenced by how many flashmobs have been staged over the years where fools with nothing better to do ape the dance moves to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and take up space on footpaths) paraded round in zombie masks to drive the point home to innocent smokers that, hey, you might just end up like them. Well guess what well-meaning zombies? We’re all going to die! (Sooner the better for some)
As part of a campaign by a mob called HealthExpress (no doubt a glorified WebMD with staff) who are offering free consulations to assist people who want to bow out from the baccy because, panic of panics, of some lark in Blighty called “Stoptober” – only three things should be celebrated in October: 1. Oktoberfest 2. Choctoberfest and 3. Labour Day if you’re unfortunate enough to live in Queensland.
Stoptober is a campaign by the NHS that boasts that it already has over 200,000 who have “pledged” to give up the Gold Flake. Whenever people “pledge” to do something makes me squirm – most likely those sad American teenagers who pledge to remain “pure” – i.e. no fumblings for them behind the bikesheds unless Daddy or “the Lord” (much the same really) “allow” them to. Interestingly people are signing up to raise money for charity while stopping for Stoptober. Why not just write a cheque? There’s always the money angle when people stop smoking, isn’t there? We’re constantly being told that if we were to pack in the Pall Malls, “Think of how much money you’ll save [by not smoking]!” Hello? How many people have nixed the nicotine only to spend the money on something else? I’ve been told quite a few times that I could afford a holiday to Bali. That’s right, holiday in a fundamentalist stronghold with (of course) disgusting records on human rights and safety and facing the indignity of being bombed while in the same room as a bunch of bogans on a package holiday – the type of drunks who give drunks a bad name – or stay at home in a peaceful democracy with a carton of Rothmans? Sadly, there’ll be people who have to think about that.
A quick look at HealthExpress’s website shows how boring they are, specialising in middle-class gripes such as weight loss, impotence, hair loss, etc – in other words: drugs for mugs and alleviation for the vain.
Just looking at the zombie masks chosen by HealthExpress doesn’t scare me a bit – they’re like something out of Bo’ Selecta! I’ve seen scarier people at the milk bar – or rather, I was affronted by the sight of a sixty-something tranny who was wearing a primary school girl-sized school uniform and he decided to bend over repeatedly to display his saggy old arse bulging out of a pair of My Little Pony pants. Now that’s a real horror!
Look here you holier-than-a-colander hypocrites, because that’s what you are. HYPOCRITES. How dare you have the unmitigated gall and tut-tut-tut temerity to tell me to stop smoking for my own good when you’re usually already morbidly overweight, voting Liberal and then complaining about them after and volunteering when you’ve got so much to sort out in your own lives before you start with somebody else’s. I smoke because I can. I enjoy it and am very skilled at it. I can even smoke White Ox without wanting to throw up. What are you good at besides scrapbooking, or rather, ruining perfectly good photos by afixing cardboard and stickers to them?
And Doctors accusing smokers of “murdering” themselves or committing a really slow and drawn out “suicide” – aren’t you doing the same by advocating that people unfortunate enough to be in a vegetative state and doubly unfortunate to not have an Advanced Health Directive should be kept alive anyway?
Of course I know the “risks” – but everything’s got a risk. Who’s to say that you won’t be hit by a car simply by walking on the side of the road? Or won’t be electrocuted while making toast? I made a conscious decision to smoke fully aware that I’m in line to receive cancer, strokes, heart disease, etc. Gotta die of something. In fact, in moments of all-out snark and hatred of the world, I entertain the idea of having an iota of fame and then getting cancer, just so I could mindfuck a lazy sub-editor who wants to print that I’m “fighting” a “battle”, because nothing would give me more pleasure to say to a hack, “Actually, no. I’m not fighting. I’m not in a battle. To carcinogenics I’m a conchy. Have fun printing that.” But of course they won’t. With any luck they’ll ask if I “have a death wish?”
“Yes, you!”
Finally, the NHS spent £5.7 million on last year’s Stoptober – how about letting people who choose to smoke face the consequences themselves and spend that money on actually improving, oh I dunno, hospitals and the quality of care?
Next thing you know there’ll be Aspartame-pril, Auglutenust and MaySG, created for only a few but paid for by all.
As I sit typing this outside the library in order to steal the wi-fi, there’s some Eurotrash backpacking couple a few metres away who have so far spent the entire afternoon sucking, rucking and no doubt eventually fucking. I write this not because I’m some pervy voyeur who gets off on this sort of thing, (lame joke alert: I get off … at Central Station! Boom boom) but I’ve never seen the point of going all out with physical affection in public. Yes, the “PDAs”, as I believe the kids call it.
I think mainly this comes from I’m not one to brag about any suitors or amoureux – yes, here revealed is my gentlemanly nature when it comes to relationships, as in, “never kiss and tell”, unlike so many of my peers who would say “conquests” (seriously? Did you wage a war or climb Mount Everest? For somebody to call someone they’ve bedded a “conquest” implies that that the “bed-or” is a sex-crazed loon and the “bed-ee” was previously held in high regard for not giving in to the urges of said wastrel, but now
So many things about couples shit me.
And yes, I’m single. Hello ladies!
But it’s not out of jealousy. Far from it. The main thing that annoys me as the fervant walker and obligatory pedestrian I am is when they get in my way, what with their slowed-down, hand-holding and body-groping walking two-abreast. I’m not jealous of the fact they’ve both found somebody who’ll put up with them. I’m annoyed because they’re in my way and they’ve destroyed the beauty and grace of walking single file.
Not to mention how sad it looks when people can’t help pawing and pouring over each other like they’ve just discovered a carbon-based biped for the first time. I believe these are the “PDAs” (Public Displays of Affection, or Pretty Dull and Asinine) that the kids speak of. One of the funniest things that happened in the entire time I spent living (or rather existing) in Rockhampton was when my mate John and I were taking a postprandial stroll down the main street and some couple in front of us decided to slow us down and start grabbing for each other on the footpath. Cue John without thinking blurting out louder than was probably polite but definitely necessary: “Get your hand out of her arse, you dirty old bastard!”
It worked.
An admission: if I’m fortunate enough to be involved with someone, and I want to “sample the goods” as these tactile exhibitionists would say, I do it at home. Or somewhere a bit more private than outside the well-lit front of Brisbane Square Library or indeed outside the State Library as a friend mentioned they’d seen happen. Have they no respect for books?!
I believe I’m more subdued when it comes to these “displays” because it’s in my nature to. I can’t recall the exact placement but there’s a rather telling planetary arrangement in my natal chart that relates to relationships and that is a perfect example of my gentlemanly ways: Does Not Kiss and Tell – take note, Mr Murdoch, should I ever have the unfortunate derring-do to be involved in some sex scandal. I’m not a grass. I shall not squeal. Hey, relationships for me are like Fight Club, and we all know the number one rule of Fight Club is to – oops.
But I digress, what’s the deal with all these lame-arsed exagerations of kissing and touching that should have been left behind the bike sheds of school? It’s like all the times I’m casually perusing my Facebook feed and somebody shares (sharing ain’t caring for me in this case) one of those sickening and simpering pictures of a bunch of flowers or some blurred picture of a couple AGAIN GOING THE GROPE, and over the top is some pathetic text like: You know he loves you when he hugs you from behind.
Excuse me?
There’s another bugbear for all you sweethearts and honeybunches out there – isn’t the act of hugging from behind, indeed, holding on to and not releasing somebody from behind some horribly domesticised form of ownership? It’s basically saying that women are still chattels. Sorry, not sorry. I’d put money on the next step in that little scenario being DV and an AVO.
I’m not a prude. Nor am I repressed – indeed, you’ll never have any idea how sexually expressive you can be until you read both Henry Miller and Erica Jong (I know, I know) at the same time and there’s nobody to “lend a hand”, as it were.
There’s a time and place for going the grope, the thoughful thump and demonstrable desire – just don’t do it in front of me. Not because I think it’s shameful (indeed, I lurve nothing more than a bit of expressive exploration with someone who wants to extol the virtues of moi), but I don’t show it off. Otherwise you give me full permission to film it and sell it to one of those hokey websites that get off, but better yet PAY to have vision of any couple getting it on. Amateurswithoutborders.com or Imorataswithoutinhibitions.org.
By the way, the Eurotrash have finally left – I turned round and applauded and asked if the show was over but they pulled the old “Non-Inglese” card.
I’ve never held much truck for teen idols. When I was a newly-minted (if not maddened) teen, proper pop music died it’s tragic death and I veered off the path to music that had mostly been released before I was born or I’d never heard before. At the time my peers were idolizing every hip-hop wannabe or anyone who could “rap” despite being a skinny white boy from a good background (really, it was just like Vanilla Ice for the new millennium) or the most manufactured and sickeningly “crowd-pleasing” (read: boring) singers around, thanks to Mr Cowell in his t-shirt and the advent of Idol, X Factor et al – not that they don’t have their merits, I just know that was the time I was supposed to admire the output of these programmes but just couldn’t care. Instead of Eminem and Green Day (which everyone my age had some unthinking admiration for), I didn’t just buck the trend but fucked it right off by getting into Kate Bush and (not sorry) Morrissey. Yes, while all the other kids were trying to, like, be in touch with their emotions, like with the whole “emo” lark of adenoidal complaining (My Chemical Romance); I was having my own little PROPER pity parties to the tunes of Mr Morrissey and yes, I did have a fave to be miz with: because I just hadn’t earned it yet. Baby.
Which brings me to the dearth of “teen idols” today, they being mainly Justin Bieber and One Direction (YUCK!) – has there been any greater musical crimes against humanity since Rebecca Black’s Friday (true story: the best thing to ever come out of that tuneless trust-funded track was me walking down Smith Street, Collingwood, and some guy was singing it at the top of his lungs “IT’S FRIDAY! FRIDAY!” and some kind soul put us all out of our misery by running up and king-hitting our atonal abuser. It could’ve been assault, but then it was Melbourne and so was more likely performance art in the tradition of Barry Humphries hitting his (pretending to be) blind friends with a stick). What I can’t fathom is why so many teenage girls swoon and lust after these fresh-faced and (damn them) clear-skinned pretty boys who in all honesty still probably haven’t fully developed. These are supposed to be teen idols?
See, those guys had actual talent – well, except Ringo – come on, Octopus’s Garden?
At least back in the day the teen idols had talent and were actually fully grown. My own grandmother wagged school to go see and scream at The Beatles when they were in Sydney. My mum swooned over Bruce Springsteen – see, grown up and TALENTED (actually, she’s still got the shits over not going to the concert yet her sister got offered a ticket to go and she wasn’t even a fan)! I passed any age-appropriate teen idol for me by but if anything I would’ve loved to have been around to fully appreciate Marc Bolan or David Bowie in their prime.
(And a quick check by text with Mumsie confirms that she was also into Leif Garrett (cut me a line, Leif!) and “Michael Jackson before he was white” – see? TALENT!)
So what’s the appeal of Bieber and 1D? They’re machine made and processed. Bieber started off looking like the stereotypical lesbian (as said to me by a lesbian, so don’t sue) and the boys from One Direction are just plain old middle-class bores. So much for Janet Street-Porter saying Harry Styles should teach philosophy to get kids learning, I doubt he’d even have the brains for that after being subjected to so much hairspray with that (GUFFAW!) Hugh Grant-esque flop on his head.
Just like that doco a while back about the fans of One Direction, where it was pretty much verified how nuts they are. The girl who allegedly killed her own dog so she could directly tweet the band that her dog died and so deserved a retweet for validation. And what’s with all those girls who fire off hate and invective – including death threats – to any potential female suitor of the boys? It’s not just jealousy, it’s psychopathy. Although I do think it’s interesting how so many of their fans dream of Harry and Liam getting it on in a homoerotic tryst. So it’s wrong to be with any other girl but fine for them to get it on amongst themselves? A small step towards equality? Boom boom.
I’ve recently started tweeting again – @thejoshholley for those who enjoy abusing conservative politicians in 140 characters or less and taking the piss out of ridiculous hashtags – and have been dismayed to find the hashtag “BumpMe1DLastTix” (I’m against it because I could never beg for anything, whether alms or 1D tickets) trending all hours of the day and night. So I used the tag to ask why don’t these girls just buy the tickets themselves and got a reply from a girl stating: “duhh we are poor white girls.”
Now, I identify as a pro-feminist (and yeah that probably seems patronizing but I’ve been given the go-ahead by the best “old-school” feminists around, including the aforementioned lesbian – and clearly, the O.S. type are the best) and so pointed out that perhaps, for a poor white girl, an education might be more worthwhile than screaming at a bunch of fops who’ll never even know they exist. Which of course gave me the adolescent response of “how bout no?”
So I decided to politely and out of genuine curiosity ask why it was OK for the boys to be gay with each other but not have a relationship with any other female. Is it a case of “I can’t have them then nobody else can” or just a petulant example of forbidden fruit?
A nice little chat.
So, I guess that particular fan still had some sort of smarts to know of The Beatles and a sense of humour too.
Twats of Twitter
Since rejoining the Twitter fray I take great joy in taking the piss out of any hashtag trending, the stupider the better. The best was last week when that paparazzo in New York rode his bicycle into Nicole Kidman, which for some unknown reason was treated as a big news story. Once it was trending I of course decided to go in for the kill and declared Kidman to be a “fake” and an annoying actor whose skill is to deny surgery and stare into the middle-distance in boring films (though To Die For and The Hours were FAB!) – cue the old joke about the guy just wanting to park his bicycle somewhere but she turned round the wrong way (and next, Bernard Manning on his mother-in-law). Cue me being called a “bitch” by some Twit Twat who took umbrage to my jibes.
Now, I don’t “feed trolls” and only engage when somebody has tweeted me first, and originally I did think this person was either a) a misguided teenage girl who should know better than to talk to strangers or b) a fat, sad old troll. So I had a bit of fun and traded insults with a somewhat worthy opponent. It’s a shame they stopped before I could ask them if actually were Muslim, because I’d JUST LOVE to know how they can call themselves that whilst enjoying all the trappings of Western materialistic excess.
Yes, wrong I know, but really I had nothing better to do and where else am I going to meet a 15 year-old bisexual boy who possibly may be Muslim and is a starfucker for teen idols (there they are again!) and Hollywood hell?
Ok, more than a week after the election I’m finally organised (or rather want to move on to writing about far more exciting things) to write about it. My observations, experience and once again longing to write a stream-of-consciousness election night piece like Bob Ellis. Here goes …
On Saturday afternoon I went to vote at my local polling booth, unfortunately this year situated in the hall of Siena Catholic College – insert glib remark about church and state here – and arrived to find quite a few Peter Slipper corflutes surrounding the place. And who wouldn’t want to kick them over, graffiti them or light them on fire? I was sensible and did nothing more violent than sticking my used chewing gum on them – twice. Much love, Pete! On the way to the queue for voting I was of course hassled by the faithful of a few different parties with their wasteful ‘How to Vote’ cards and pamphlets. Again, I was well behaved and instead of telling the Liberal volunteers to “piss off” I instead gave them the most curt and forceful “NOTHANKYOU” I could manage. I of course took the Labor sheet and a Palmer United Party (yes, PUP! – the most useless and ironic in it’s non use of irony anagram since the National bank became NAB) pamphlet and was again civilised to my canvas-shoed toes until the PUP player said after me, “Best place for it, put the yellow paper on top of the red!” So of course I automatically before you could say “fat millionaire” switched the papers round in my hands so Labor was again on top.
So, after quickly lining up I made my way to the polling booth and filled out the green ballot for the House of Reps.
And out of the 10 candidates my preference was:
GREENS (Y’know, preferences to Labor and all that)
LABOR – Bill Gissane was the candidate for Fisher and from first-sight a good bloke too
Oh like you really care – you’ll be pleased to know I put Mal Brough dead last in 10th place and Slipper 9th, the rest were a motley bunch of half-baked independents, Family First (read: Fundamentalist) and the usual blokey yobbos from PUP and Katter’s Australia Party.
On to the Senate ballot, and of course I voted below the line, like you’d expect anything less (or better) of me. And I spent my time carefully giving my preferences to all 82 candidates for Queensland. Again, Greens 1st, Labor 2nd, the Liberals dead last at number 82 and then to work backwards until I’d made sure that the Sex Party was ahead of the I Shoot, Root and Vote or whatever the fuck they’re called.
I snapped myself after voting in a little tribute of sorts to Catherine Deveny’s pic of her culture-jamming the 2004 election.
At least I was on the right side of history.
And so to the election coverage.
And WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT it was that once respectable “journalists” or people who dare to call themselves “journalists” (whom you would think would know that to be a journalist one must be factual and IMPARTIAL) were declaring that Tony Abbott and his band of fundamentalist and economic-rationalist nutbags had already won – at 5 pm! Another hour until the polls closed in the eastern states! I know, right?
And Channel 7’s coverage, called the “Panel of Power” or some such rubbish that clearly belongs to a talk show in the 90s was nice and equitable, starting off with 4 Libs and 2 Labor people on the panel. And only 1 woman too! So switching over to the more “balanced” if not “subdued” ABC before I put my foot through the television, it was the same thing! “Liberals win! Liberals win!” Never have I seen Antony Green throwing all sense of patience and factual actuality out the window.
Eventually I started to get drunk, not to drown my sorrows on a Labor loss (I remain a proud Gillardite and know one day my views on Rudd will be vindicated) but because I just didn’t care anymore. This had been the most uninspiring election campaign in (my) recent memory, forced to choose between a paedophile-defending, fundamentalist-Catholic, homophobic, misogynistic blue(blood) tongued-lizard and a megalomaniac sadist who can whip up support on Instagram but can’t pass any lasting policies. Is it any wonder I just didn’t care?
By now (and I’m still waiting for the final result, was waiting until all votes were counted before I wrote this but I can’t put it off any longer) I really only hoped that Sophie Mirabella, the Member for Indi would lose her seat. Don’t know Sophie? Lucky you! How to explain a sneering, bullying, hysterical in the non-belief of a round Earth (probably) and most of all, RUDE person like Mrs Mirabella? And no, I don’t hate her because she’s a woman (looking at you, Helen Razer) but because, well, the best way to explain this is: you know that a person can’t be good if your astrology-teaching and peace and love-espousing mum reads Mirabella’s bio and all she can say is, “What a dog!”
What, not THAT Cathy McGowan? Oops.
Anyway, the one good thing (I hope will still happen) of this campaign is the massive swing against Mirabella, led by independent Cathy McGowan. Good on her! I’m sure I’m one of many people who wish they were enrolled to vote in Indi just to give Mirabella the shits. And no, unlike a few people on the internet who believe that most people are against Mirabella due to her being a woman, and not just a vile and nasty person – Helen Razer, whom I’ve only just discovered and copped a fair bit of flak for taking the view that we all hate Mirabella because she’s a woman, take note.
And on the subject of Ms Razer, she made election night fun. Sadly she’s since deleted her twitter account and has pretty much gone “off the grid”, but with a few drinks in me and a lot more in her she was tweeting away about anything that was annoying her about the election, politics and people in general. From calling Kevin Rudd a “symbolism obsessed lollipop” to decrying the left for trying to change the world with “rainbow chalk crossings”, what’s not to love? Shame on you wowsers and Helen Lovejoys who all flew off the handle at her. If I was any more churlish, I’d be like that skinny idiot having a hissy fit on Youtube – “LEAVE HELEN ALONE!”
So I got drunker on first Malibu, then Tequila, then Bourbon before I passed out for a bit after watching the Ruddbot’s concession speech and thankfully slept through Abbott’s victory, before my brother came home and piled me with more booze, Vodka this time, and he finally conceded that I can punch properly, for some reason daring me to punch him repeatedly in the stomach. It was that kind of night. I’m sure a glib columnist for the Sunday supplement would make some analogy of “rolling with the punches” here.
And so, we who believe in marriage equality, faster broadband and better infrastructure have been left to go wallow in the misery of opposition for the next few years. And yes, Labor did win more primary votes than the Libs, but only because the LNP and the Nationals aren’t tallied together with the Liberal Party, which is a crock despite they love to have a love-in, sorry, COALITION.
although it may have seemed like a joke or a funny little aside for so many Australians to say after the result of the 2013 federal election, I am not playing around when I say I’m considering moving to your fair shores to escape the misery, strife and economic rationalism of a Tony Abbott-led government.
I have always had unwavering respect for your nation, believing it to be a smaller yet cleaner and far more progressive version of Australia. As Mark Latham said in one of his moments of lucidity, “New Zealand is the Switzerland of the Pacific”, obviously without the discrimination of migrants in parks and public pools and without Oprah Winfrey getting in a flap over being refused the purchase of a gaudy piece of fabric as a handbag that costs five-figures or some such.
I’ve been to New Zealand only once before, for a week’s holiday when I was 13, but I was very impressed with how bright, friendly and switched-on both your people and country is. I do not wish to piss in your pocket, but how are you not a bigger presence on the world stage? Oh but of course, you’re humble and happy to stay as one of the few happy and content wallflowers on the international stage.
As an Australian, I’ve always been conscious of not automatically claiming the people and products of your good country as “our” own, to me, Split Enz is New Zealand. Sam Neill is New Zealand. Russell Crowe. John Clarke. Pavlova. New Zealand.
I’ve enjoyed the films of Peter Jackson, specifically the pre-Hollywood titles: the ribald Bad Taste. The divine Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners for having that foxy Trini Alvarado in a lead role.
Yes, I am willing to leave Australia because of a hard-line conservative government elected to rule, and yes, I am aware that currently New Zealand is governed by a conservative party, but hey, any conservative party that legalises marriage equality can’t be that bad, can it? I’m only a 23 and already a staunch Labor voter, but how impressive are the people of your own Labour Party? Helen Clark, Mike Rann and especially Georgina Beyer, the world’s first elected transgender MP! I am also impressed by how more equitable your society is in relation to your indigenous people, unlike Australia’s own.
New Zealand, if you’re happy to have me, I pledge full allegiance to Aotearoa, because after all, if a country that can give the world such happy and peaceful people (no, I’m not one of the Australian fools that idolises and glorifies the socioeconomic thuggery as a way of life of Once Were Warriors, seriously, how many skinny white teenage Aussies have to be a starfucker for that guy?) like Edmund Hillary, The Topp Twins, Ernest Rutherford and Janet Frame … well, I’m gushing so I’ll conclude.
Already quite a few left-leaning Australians are rhapsodizing migrating to New Zealand, and indeed this has already been decried as “comfortable, well-off white people”, but fuck that, I’m getting in first.If anyone wishes to fund my passage across the Tasman, please contact me to exchange bank details 😉
This is, for now, as close as I’ll probably ever come to writing from my heart, or at least the spot where I have a lumpen-shaped chunk of stone where one’s “heart” usually is.
Tomorrow, we will all be voting in the 2013 federal election, or at least those who turn up will, even if they just cock and ball the ballot paper. Thinking of that makes me want to spill the beans on the only excuse I know of that works if you’re pulled up for not voting, but tomorrow’s election is so important that everyone needs to vote, so ask me later.
It is important to vote tomorrow not just because we live in a democracy and can vote for whomever we wish without fear of rigging – or much fear, it shames me to admit that my beloved Labor did once rig the result in a by-election for the Victorian state seat of Nunawading in the 80s but ho hum, it kept Jeff Kennett away from the top job for a few more years.
It is important to vote tomorrow not just because it’s something to get done and then the rest of your Saturday is free to use watching the football.
It is important to vote tomorrow and equally if not more so who you vote for.
I know that on this blog and on Twitter, and especially in my Facebook page if you know me from there, that I regularly, if not prolifically, go the thump on the Liberal Party and conservatives of all political parties in a way that really only makes me look like a 13 year-old in the body of a 23 year-old (I know, I’m like mental jailbait) but this time I’m imploring you to vote Labor and not Liberal for what is to many people I know arguably the most important topic of this election campaign, and you’re excused (this time) for not picking up on it, thanks to the mainstream media’s pathetic admiration and enabling exploitation of Tony Abbott”s daughters, who have been seen every day on the campaign trail being used by their father to get attention, patriarchal pimp that he is.
It is important to not vote Liberal or to preference them last on your ballot paper not just because of their policy of “rewarding” mothers who already earn over $100,000 a year up to $75,000 in paid-parental leave (just what we need, more North Shore brats with a sense of entitlement). Not just because of their policy to stop people-smuggling from Indonesia by buying, yes, spending our taxpaying dollars on buying the rickety and unsafe boats of the smugglers – and then what? Forget Great Western Auto City, Barloworld and Cool Banana Motorama, give Honest Tony’s Used Boats a try. Not just because of their policy on repealing anti-discrimination laws.
What we should all be worried about more than Mr Abbott’s repeated insensitive, discriminatory and offensive “gaffes” and “daggy dad moments” is what he and his party will do to workers, specifically people who rely on their penalty rates in order to live.
It could be argued that would delivered victory to Labor and allowed them to form a government after 11 years of Liberal rule was the Libs’ policy known as “Work Choices”, which was vehemently protested against by all due to it’s unfairness and bullying of workers that would be legalised and we’d have nothing to do about it. Work Choices was basically a way to undo collective and enterprise bargaining in the workplace and to get workers on individual contracts whereby the public was told that their employment contracts would be “tailor-made” to suit them – yes, if that suit was being worn on the proverbial clerk in the old saying, “Done up like a pox doctor’s clerk”.
In 2011, Mr Abbott was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW (bring back Hinch!) and declared that if elected to government, Work Choices would be “dead and buried” and “cremated” under his leadership, nor would the policy be returning under any other name.
However, just last week, the Liberal candidate for the seat of Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis, was quoted as saying in a candidate’s forum that “Any workplace relations legislation is on the table after the election, not before.” Yes, AFTER and NOT BEFORE.
If you think I’m exaggerating here, cast your mind back to the “Watefront dispute” in 1998 when Patrick Stevedores, assisted by then Minister for Industrial Relations, Peter Reith to lock all of it’s workers out of their jobs at ports nationwide via bullying, assault and intimidation – security guards who were nothing more than glorified thugs patrolling the wharves wearing balaclavas and with the hounds ready to be released at a moment’s notice. For more on that dark episode in our nation’s employment history, see the docu-drama Bastard Boys.
And now Mr Abbott has refused to say outright whether or not he is supportive of some big businesses idea of ridding us of penalty rates. Instead, Mr Abbott shiftily refers to a Productivity Commission into Industrial Relations that he is promising will (doubtful I’m guessing) either cut penalty rates and thus jobs in the strange belief that the more penalty rates are gone, the more jobs can be created from this.
As ACTU President Ged Kearney has said:
“We need Tony Abbott to commit to making no changes to penalty rates if he is elected, rather than hiding behind his mysterious Productivity Commission inquiry into IR.”
“Penalty rates have been part of the Australian workplace for decades and provide much-needed income for low-paid workers who are required to work week-ends and public holidays.”
“Cutting penalty rates will hurt workers without creating jobs.”
“Money paid as penalty rates does not disappear it is returned to the economy when workers use it to buy goods and services from businesses. Reducing penalty rates will hurt these businesses.”
If you or anyone you know has a job whereby they are paid an award rate, or receive penalty pay or even providing frontline services in the community especially, then do not let them vote Liberal.
A vote for the Liberal party tomorrow will fuck this country up, and that’s putting it politely.
I’m writing this because with all the possible outcomes of a possible Abbott government, and that’s including the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, people being paid by the government to push out sprogs they can already afford to keep themselves, bullying and bigotry instead of debate on policy, not to mention all the other disasters that will happen from those in his “cabinet” (for all their intelligence it’s more like a broom-cupboard), what he will do to workers is the worst.
As somebody who has worked in a job that requires penalty rates to make the wage worthwhile, and most people I know also requiring their penalties to survive, a vote for anyone but Labor will make us all worse off and, without exaggerating, have to go begging for alms.Please don’t vote for Tony Abbott. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.yo
Today I came across a “meme” from a Facebook page that is anti-Abbott (so clearly my kind of people) and this was the image:
Tosser
Yes, Mr Abbott, who is somehow an “honourable” man, really did compare Nazi Germany to women having abortions in Australia. Obviously, Mr Abbott has been making “gaffes”, “faux pas” and general displays of behaviours of being a dick not just during this election campaign, but since he was first elected to parliament as the Member for Warringah. He made the above remark during his first-term, having been elected in 1994, and so convinced that there is surely a treasure-trove of more ridiculous statements to be found in Hansard, I set out to read Mr Abbott’s maiden speech, way back on May 31, 1994.
If I can achieve anything at all in this place, I will owe it to the people of Warringah who have sent me here. If I can amount to anything at all in our national life, I will be indebted to my great predecessors whose shoes I struggle to fill: Michael MacKellar, who stood for the humane and the decent; Edward St John, who never shirked a fight in a good cause …
Yes, Michael MacKellar, who imported a colour television-set without declaring it to customs and who with a fellow minister tried to cover it up.
Edward St John, an arch-Tory who rubbed shoulders with that crazed Catholic crusader Bob Santamaria, yet who somehow years after leaving parliament became an anti-nuclear activist and founding the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, yes, a Lib who was against Apartheid – unlike John Howard who generally supported (and has never rebuked since) Margaret Thatcher’s wish for Nelson Mandela to be hanged.
You’re a scrapper but never for anything other than your own parochial, patriarchal pursuits.
Since Labor came to power in 1983, government has become a means for applying bandaids to social problems rather than an instrument for giving cohesion and purpose to our national life.
Which must make Mr Abbott’s policies of putting an end to people-smuggling by paying, if not bribing and/or buying out rickety, leaky old boats in Indonesia off people-smugglers (Honest Tony’s Used Cars, I mean Boats) and paying up to $75,000 for North Shore breeders who are already well off to eke out taxpayers money because their of selfish sprog spawning, seem like the medical equivalent of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. A skin-graft for a paper cut? Find a band-aid for your own stupidity, Tony.
“In the quest to solve social problems, government reaches into our schools, our workplaces and even our bedrooms.”
And are these problems what society, and I mean everybody in this country considers to be problems Mr Abbott or they, as per, just your own crazed beliefs after being the bottom tutored by Santamaria’s dick Catholic crusades? Like Mr Abbott as Minister for Health putting a stop to RU-486 being legal in this country and putting your own personal views of abortion as “the easy way out” and a woman’s virginity (oh, is Queen Victoria still on the throne? Then get yourself a Prince Albert at the dirtiest joint around, you blue(blood)-tongue lizard) as a “precious gift”.
In closing, Mr Abbott ends his speech with a litany of thanks to the usual suspects (I wonder who is Keyser Soze, boom boom):
To my parents and to my grandparents;
There were four siblings, with Abbott the only boy. He was spoiled and, as one sister later remarked, “Tony was always the star”. His mother thought so highly of him that she predicted he would become either pope or prime minister.
May God and the ghosts of great men give me strength. May those who have laboured greatly to build this nation fortify my resolve to make a worthy contribution in this House.
We’re still waiting for you to make one, Tony.
5 days until D-Day.
Oh to be one of those people who had the funds to be able to say, “If Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister I’m leaving the country!” And I seriously would – Britain, Germany, New Zealand, the list is endless to get away from this blue(blood)-tongue lizard.
PS – If anybody else has the patience and determination to trawl through the archives of Hansard from 1994 onwards to find lesser known quotes made by Mr Abbott that are rather telling, submit them here! 😉
Recently Opposition Leader (and aspirant to the top job – knock him down, people!) Tony Abbott has had letters sent to voters all over the country, tailored and suited to their constituency, pleading for them to vote Liberal and by describing how we can “choose a stronger Australia and a better government” and his “Plan” to do so, which is in itself vague, non-descriptive and mistier than the vision of somebody with cataracts being stuck in a Gaussian blur.
Inspired by the few “responses” to these letters I’ve seen, mostly to be found on anti-Abbott Facebook pages (may Abbott’s own mad Mick God bless these people’s efforts instead of his), including this excellent and inspiring one from a constituent of the Division of Wills (thankfully held by Labor’s Kelvin Thomson – GO KEL!):
Whoever did this reply I will happily buy them a pint and bake them a cake.
I decided to knock out a reply to this one sent to Mumsie, (yes, my shame is that I’m enrolled to vote in the Division of Fisher, where I’m hoping that the result will not leader to Angus Deayton’s only quip of “No change there then”):
Unfortunately, the ink was dying on my pen and I was without a scanner for the full high-resolution of my facetious responses.
If you’re reading this in Australia and have received one of these untruthful, PR-driven and ultimately failed missives, do as I’ve done and send it back to whichever candidate Mr Abbott has sent it from on their behalf. Also, if you’re on the other side of the world, I’d love to see what you can do with your political pamphlets too.
Well, it’s been a month since I last posted anything here because I’ve been a) too busy moving back to the “big smoke” of Brisbane, which last time I left because it was like a large country town but now it’s like a proper city – the pubs are open late on weeknights now! b) trying to find gainful employment here (and I shall “reveal” that I’m actually an aged care nurse – bet you’d never guess that’s my day job) and c) there’s been so much to write that I can’t decide what to punch out first: I’ve been meaning to write for nearly two months now a letter of commiseration to Julia Gillard (and on the whole Rudd vs. Gillard frippery, I’m still proudly pro-Gillard – much like with British Labour having had Blairites and Brownites, I’m proud to call myself a Gillardite); the election campaign currently underway between Kevin Rudd, who’s campaign slogan is “A New Way” (again, does this not sound like Tony Blair’s “Third Way”? If Kev wins – which I hope beyond all power of wishful thinking that he will to spare us the arch-conservative rule of Tony Abbott, more anon – I really hope he doesn’t start calling his style of governance “New Labor”); the laughable fringe parties (Katter’s Australia Party and Palmer’s United Party – yes, PUP, the most unfortunate acronym for something since the National bank changed to NAB) who think they’re actually going to win seats; and the (newly discovered on my part) awesomeness of Elizabeth Taylor. Quite the mix, huh?
Anyway, let’s start with the election so far. We’ve less than a month until polling day and so far the whole thing’s been totally uninspiring – the only enjoyment I get from it is whenever Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (a hair-sniffing, paedophile-defending, woman-hating, Anglo-loving, North Shore-living, blue-blooded tongue lizard. And a fundamentalist Mick too, who only quit the seminary because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants – imagine that! A priest who took a pro-active stance with his (ugh!) libido) or one his co-conspirators from the Liberal Party make a gaffe, faux-pas or grand-mal fuck-up.
The first fuck-up came courtesy of the Liberal candidate for the seat of Greenway (currently held by Labor and the most marginal in the country), Jaymes Diaz – and yes, that hurts to type and spell James that way; it’ll never have the same impact as Liza with a Z – who when quizzed on the Libs’ “Six Point Plan” for asylum seekers could not name a single point. True to form, like all Libs when they can’t answer a question, Mr Diaz blinked, stuttered, shrugged his shoulders and mentioned something about families before being led away by a minder (so clearly on day release, Mr Diaz). Since then it’s gone global and most notably featured on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in the US of A, complete with all the other aspiring politicians in this country who’ve ballsed up their one shot in the past week (see, Peter Dowling, a Lib who sexted his mistress a pic of his dick in a glass of red – I hope it stung; and Stephanie Bannister, standing for the right-wing and non-admitting xenophobic One Nation party, confusing Islam as a country and the word “haram” for Quran, as well as saying she has no problem with Jews because “they follow Jesus Christ”). Apparently, it’s since been alleged that Jaymes “Liza with a Z” Diaz has slagged off his neighbouring constituency of Chifley (held by the country’s first Muslim MP, Ed Husic, for Labor) as being “full of Muslims” and tweeting his detractors juvenile missives to “fuck off”.
Next came a meet-and-greet with Abbott and one of his many lacklustre candidates, complete with the obligatory non-consensual baby-kissing, and what appeared to be a photo of Mr Abbott sniffing the hair of the baby’s mother. Now, we could say this was just an unfortunate camera-angle that snapped an unfortunate moment. But no. If fellow Liberal Troy Buswell can be caught out seat-sniffing, then does it not surprise us that all Libs have sniffing tendencies?
Yesterday, Mr Abbott described his party’s candidate for Lindsay as having “sex appeal” and today writing it off as a “daggy dad moment” – look Tony, my own father has plenty of daggy moments (and sometimes I seriously believe he must be on the autism spectrum) complete with sexist and hateful views, but he at least knows not to say them in public!
And today, when again quizzed on whether the members of his party will be allowed a conscience vote on any motions to legalise same-sex marriage, Mr Abbott again dismissed this with an even more offensive quote than he has uttered on the subject before, describing marriage equality as, “the fashion of the moment”. And yet people are seriously considering voting for this hateful, backwards and arch-conservative bully. This is not my Australia. How could we go from the glory days and revolutionary and awe-inspiring governments of Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and even Julia Gillard until the media (read: Rupert Murdoch) and the sub-conscious bigotry and vileness of otherwise “normal” folk came to the fore and villified and hindered any hope of a fair-go of governance for Ms Gillard? And from within her own party, too – yes, you Kevin. I’m only 22 (23 next Thursday, join me for booze, spills and thrills if you like) and proudly identify as a “staunch” and “rusted-on” Labor voter, despite my dislike of Mr Rudd – yet if he’s our only chance to ensure that this country is not sent back to the 1950s in policy, society and our standard of living, then fight the good fight Kev – don’t give that Blue(blood)-Tongue Lizard the satisfaction.
And so, as luck would have it, this morning I found out that Mr Abbott was doing a presser down the street at the Hilton, so I raced round there and sat on the other side of the street to the front (and only) exit of the joint in the hope of seeing Phoney “Kony” Tony. And after an hour’s wait and watching his minders and staffers mill about in the obligatory white Holden Statesmans’ (oh ok, Statesmen) with Commonwealth plates, he emerged. And you know what, he’s actually pretty short! Macho man of politics my arse! Seriously, it’s no surprise he is the way he is, he’s got near dwarfy-Tom Cruise levels of Small Man Syndrome. Anyway, as he happened to turn his head in my direction, I took a chance and shouted the most polite word I could use to describe him.
“KNAVE!”
So there we go, I called Tony Abbott a knave, and whether he heard it or not I don’t know (I’m guessing he manages to block out anything that isn’t spoken by a blue-tie wearing fool), at least I did it, in my own special little small-a anarchist way. By the way, his security detail is pretty poor, just a bunch of old farts who look more like White-Shoe Brigaders up from the Gold Coast to follow their “leader” around. So if you should see Mr Abbott around, kneecap for me! I’ll lend you the crowbar.
—
I’ve just discovered the writings of journalist Liz Jones, former fashion-editor and now columnist for the Daily fail,hell, Mail, who writes of her life in a column called “Liz Jones’ Diary”. I believe the selling-point is that Ms Jones is unafraid and unashamed to write of her miserable upbringing, depression and successive failures to make friends and get blokes and keep them. So far, I’ve been reading the book based on her writings and providing the backstory to her forlorn failures and eating disorders, neuroses and media-placed malaise and am finding it interesting, hillarious, heartbreaking and (yes, I’m admitting this) just occasionally familiar to moi. No, I haven’t tried to steal somebody’s sperm or had plastic surgery, but there’s a few stray similarities between myself and Ms Jones that I keep picking up on in her writing (ok now I’ve gotta sing this, “Have you met Miss Jones?”) which makes me want to either keep on reading in the hope it gets better and all is well (although by the tone of this op-ed from the Independent I doubt it) and I want to give her a hug a la Milhouse, “So this is what it feels like … when doves cry.” And how could you not either laugh hysterically or cry soul-crushingly over titles such as: “In which I face a lonely birthday” (veteran of that), “In which the years aren’t kind to me” and “In which more friends desert me”. Best I’ve read so far is “In which I’m rejected yet again”:
To promote my autobiography, I came up with the brilliant idea of asking all the men who wouldn’t go out with me, all my ex-boyfriends (all – that’s a joke!) and ex-husband, and all the friends who have dropped me to write about why I am such a pariah.
What did I do that rendered me so unfanciable? Why am I not worth a reply to a text?
and after a list of absent, wayward and disappeared friends and lovers …
They were all contacted and asked, ‘Why did you reject Lizzie?’
Each and every one refused to answer …
Well, welcome to my world, Lizzie! Where on this earth have my muckers L, A, J, G, R, K and E buggered off to? Though this being the “modern world”, any semblance of normal etiquette doesn’t apply, as I’ve found out with Facebook. It’s seems to be perfectly acceptable to just “unfriend” and block someone on the site with nary a word why. And as for all the etiquette I bang on about, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve never read Debretts – instead I’ve picked it all up by watching Ladette to Lady and Bad Lad’s Army.
If I could make a quid from it, then I’d happily publish all the anxious and near self-fulfilling prophecy (oh shut up, Josh) thoughts that keep me awake at night, but they’re not even embarrassing. They don’t get sympathy, even from me. Really, the only word I can use to describe my tendencies to be an over-emotional fool is “pathetic”. Who gives a shit if I have a semi-recurring dream that when I wake up from it has knocked seven shades of shit out of me? Or that I can’t accept most compliments because I’m deserving and that it’s presumptuous of me to expect people to give a damn anyway. But the money from such a venture … Yes, Liz Jones and her writing is the proverbial car-crash that you can’t look away from, a truck laden with combustible chemicals about to destroy a school bus, a parish of nuns and the cure for cancer. Oh well, it’s better than Fifty Shades of Grey!
Finally, one evening recently I decided to have a few drinks and traipsed round on my lonesome, having a little solo pub-crawl to see what was new since I’d last lived in Brisbane. After discovering the Embassy (where all the booze is either crafted, artisan or made by hand without being the slightest bit annoying pretentious), and being introduced to White Rabbit Dark Ale (do try it, it’s like White Ox tobacco in liquid form, but smoother than blue-eyed soul, so unlike the tobacco favoured as prison currency, it doesn’t one-inch-punch you in the soul as you imbibe it) I had a few pints of the yeasty restorative. At the next and final bar I went to I tried the White Rabbit Pale Ale and it’s a lovely drop too, and, I’m still embarrassed by this so here goes, I FELL ASLEEP! I know, right? I was only a bit tired but didn’t even notice myself nodding off with a pint in my hand whilst perched precariously on a wobbly barstool, and was woken up by the nice Irish barman, leaving to quickly slam down the rest of it and scurry away with my metaphorical tale between my legs. See, hardly up to Ms Jones’ level of unfortunate events is it?
So there we go, a post of rambling, self-agrandizing waffle but hey, at least I’m back! So look forward to some more regular updates around here and hopefully you can give me some of that sweet feedback too, even if it is hate mail. In fact, I do prefer hate mail, because nothing thrills me more than replying carefully-worded missives to my detractors (just like when I got bete-noires from my onetime fundamentalist Christian neighbours – what else could I do but reply with serial-killer handwriting and signing it “THE DEVIL”?), although I guess encouragement is just as good.
The Josh Holley 