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W+anchor & Skuttlebutt
Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
It surprises me sometimes, how emotionally sticky Australians are. But then it surprises me how deeply tolerant we are. Still we haven’t thrown W+anchor and Skuttlebutt overboard and they’ve been deeply irritating of late. W+anchor! Stop goading your sister! ENOUGH of Nauru. One more n-word from you and you’ll be put in goal.
There’s a particular wisdom that all parents should know. Never get caught out making a threat that you don’t intend to follow through. Never say NO if you’re not completely sure of what you would do if it didn’t work. Never do that, not even once. Now Skuttlebutt’s gone and done it. It’s hard to know what terrible consequence this is going to have, but we do know one thing, now that the high court has said NO, and Skuttlebutt has only become disappointed, very disappointed with you….to say in return, we know that things are going to be very different along our coastlines. My guess is, backpacking’s got tenure.
It would probably surprise a lot of Australians to learn that there are countries, even quite close to our own, where wanting to go to Australia is not considered illegal. Where finding a boat and catching a boat to Australia is not unlike the experiences of many Australians of catching a bus loaded with dead fish and live chickens through the mountains. It’s a bit risky, it’s uncomfortable, but then again it’s something to tell your family about.
Sometimes local transportation is just like that. But it’s cheaper.
If I were looking for a start-up business right now, I’d be off to one of those countries right now. I would find a nice building and open a chinese restaurant. Near the water. With a little guesthouse out the back. W+anchor and Skuttlebutt. At your service.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Lehan, you write and you paint beautifully; why not at least try to make some money of that combination. Maybe teaching, writing for the Drum (pocket money, bus fares) or something on those lines…
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Thankyou Helvi. I wish I could earm some money from my writing. But the things I think the best, the Drum won’t publish. Sigh.
If I have enough of a yard behind the chinese restaurant I could pot up some wisteria and parsley and put a little stall at the front. But everyone knows you can’t bring flowers and herbs into Australia. Nobody is likely to buy a couple of pots to take on the boat. So I think a garden shop is out.
Anyone have any other ideas?
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Paint the pots!
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There is nothing, however, to say that I couldn’t make very nifty boat survival packs for people making the big trip. Little vacuum packed meals. Tiny sealed packs of wet-tissues. Little notebooks and pencils. Sunscreen and that white stuff you stick on your nose. Bottled water. In a very tastefully designed BoatPAC (copyright). With some glow sticks. I like it.
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Sure thing, Vee-ell. They take the boat, they arrive at the edge of Australia, the customs police want to know what they have brought with them and they say POT? I think that’s really going to confuse things. I think the BoatPAC (Copyright) – or better still the NUWALIFE PAC (PTO LTD) is the way to go. Little packets of trail mix, waterproof pencils, playing cards, a glow in the dark stick-on.
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A good job when not afraid of heights is swinging on a bosun’s chair on multi storey buildings curing concrete cancer. Go to High Street in North Sydney and some fifty years ago there wouldn’t have been a single multi story block of flats where I didn’t happily travel up and down the exteriors trying to stop the steel from rusting and blowing off the concrete from the edges of the concrete slabs. It paid well, and not much competition…
At this stage I have left an exciting career a bit late but that never stopped me from at least trying to do a job well, any job really.
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I was thinking of doing that….Lehan may have to reach her 100ndreth post without me. I’m off to dangle off the top of Q1.
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Why don’t you dangle one of your Cos Lettuces?
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Concrete cancer seems to be far less curable than the human kind.
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Concrete cancer is going to play havoc with our cities close to the sea. It’s a very costly business to rectify, especially in buildings where the re-enforcing steel was left too close to the surface.
Just take a drive along the water front on the central coast and look at the buildings of the sixties and seventies.
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A good business to invest in is home delivery of Internet products.
You need a couple of dozen secure courier vans, a good insurance policy and a lot of ethanol, Lehan.
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This is a truly excellent discussion.
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There are some old lollies in plastic wrappers on a chipped saucer next to the cash register. They’ve been there since the last owner. It’s just at eye height for the scrawny little kids with big eyes clustered up around it. But I’m not handing out lollies to anyone who hasn’t ordered, and I’m not moving away from where I’m leaning, against the window, underneath the airconditioning vent.
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Those kids aren’t scrawny because they’re starved. They’re scrawny because their mum’s vegan. Doesn’t let them eat all that stuff they used to see on TV in their concrete flat. The television was always on. That’s often what drew them to the roadside cafes, the television. The is television on in the back of my restaurant, in the corner but pointed so that you can see it through the window when you get off the bus. With the sound down low so you can’t much hear it over the cassette player.
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Some of them have already taken a boat (or a bus) full of goats and chickens and dead fish. Getting out of their country to start with. These kids think they must be going to a place very like the place they came from. Because the public transport to Australia is the same.
And, actually, they will find that it isn’t so different. Just more bars on the doors and windows.
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I bet you some of those kids are thinking that when they grow up, they’ll come back here and open a restaurant next door.
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A garden centre Lehan. DO please try to keep up. 🙂
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Or a poo shop?
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Next to a restaurant? Ewwww.
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I forgot to take the DVDs back.
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A garden centre?
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A simpleton named Chance was turned out onto the streets, when his benefactor died. Probably Chance was just a name allotted to him, by the family that took him into their home. He just talked about gardening, however, The American President was convinced that he was an intellectual; a close mouthed economist and a genius. This is from The film “Being There”, that starred Peter Sellers.
President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President “Bobby”: In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President “Bobby”: Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President “Bobby”: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill
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That was indeed a wonderfull movie, Lord Funston… which ultimately (if we bear in mind the final scene) suggests that there is absolutely no difference between simplicity (as exemplified by Chance the Gardener) and wisdom…
🙂
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Or bullshit and walking on water?
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I must admit, you have a point, milord… or perhaps the water just wasn’t as deep as we assumed it was… in either Chance’s case or the original which inspired Chance’s aquatic stroll… Perhaps nothing is as deep as it seems… with the possible exception of the bullshit!
😉
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Voice, sorry for the tardy reply but I was called away.
My memory says “horse” but since you’ve questioned it, I’m not certain. Just tried to call my uncle but he wasn’t there and my aunt -who’s from another part of Greece said it’s all farmer’s horseshit anyway, so no help yet. I’ll call again later. Mother is certain it’s the horse poo that’s “hot” but she, too ain’t too sure.
I’ll get back to ya.
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Ato, the chicken poo is the hottest, I believe the horse poo is ‘mildest’, alpaca poo is useless as alpcas are very efficient of using all the nutrients, all the good stuff, so the poo is practically useless. Don’t know much about sheep, but cow poo tends to have weed seeds 🙂
Chicken droppings are best when mixed in water and so used as liquid fertilizer.
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Why not just run your garden under the ABC Drum for a while. I am sure it will do far more than just manure the tulips for a couple of weeks. Someone just sprinkled some shredded Lapkin with P.Reith and C.Berg and you should have seen the rhubarb shoot up. Just amazing.
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…and throw the anti asylum seekers and Hicks haters into the same compost heap, or should we make some blood and bone fertilizer…
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The Drum is looking more and more a lost cause.
Hardly worth my spare time any more. The hatred for anything and everything that’s not wearing a military uniform or a torturer’s paraphernalia, is increasingly amplified.
A dismal place to visit, alas!
I wouldn’t grace them with animal faeces. Fling them over the precipices of Tartarus, I say. Let them feel the pains of Prometheus.
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Gerard and Helvi – both good ideas but I think the resulting compost would be too toxic for the garden plants. Maybe they could be processed through some biofuel machinery but I don’t think you’d get much out of their bodies being run by such shrivelled up minds.
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Exactly Ato – everything closed for comment even when it is apparently open. Half a day now the norm ! Bloody hell. Get something interesting and a bit of argument and poof, closed. You can be left hanging, voiceless. Still it shuts out the right as well as the left. But at this rate it is useless as a medium for the expression of opinion. I think it will be killed off by 10.42 am on Friday the 9th September and then they’ll have one last where were you on 11th September 2001.
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I’m with you on blood & bone. Let’s start with Hicks.
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Helvi, can you please not bring up Hicks? I have this awful feeling that he may have killed someone, when he fired those bullets.
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To laugh or to cry?
After a lengthy discussion on the “heat” or otherwise of various faecal extractions, with my cousin in Greece (the horticultural one) we’ve come to the conclusion that, though the anal extrications of the donkey and the goat are slightly more “heated” the difference, in terms of effect are not particularly significant and after only a week, they are barely perceptible, even in a lab. He concluded that the most “heated” and thus effective manure is that of humans, with that of GWB being the most effective of them all because its active ingredients are the most volatile. He thought that the poo dropped by Greece’s PM could also be fairly toxic, but he doubts the old guy is active enough to produce any… these days.
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I am sure all this gardening advice and political meanderings is going to be of great assistance to Lehan regarding her future directions.
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Anyways, at this juncture I’m off to The Gold Coast Turf Club, to get some horse manure. I can get a trailer load for free and then have the garden ready by about the 14th.
I know that there is tons of horseshit in here, but I can’t get it off ‘wordpress’! ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻
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The 14th of October? You know to leave it to compost for a few weeks before applying it , don’t you?
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Is horse manure the same as compost?
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Get Voice to expand on this. But most horse manure is given away by horsey people and it is fresh or perhaps a week old. It ought to be allowed to compost or be added to existing compost. Using it fresh is just too much and can do harm.
Helvi, horse poo, chicken poo, cow poo or chook poo – all is poo, not compost. A little bit goes a long way I think. From memory if you add it to a garden bed it ought to be a new/empty garden bed which in some months time will then be great for planting into.
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Yes. They give away new, or slightly old. Of course as it’s free they don’t leave it to compost. So the oldest is only ..say 4 days old. I went up there this morning to have a look. 🙂
My brother recommends dolomite to combat the ammonia, buit also reckons that it doesn’t do a lot of harm if you put it in straight away.
I have a plastic composter for kitchen& garden scraps, but I won’t be putting it in there. I don’t want to leave it lying around (as it is outside of my computer room).
I have spread the newspapers thick, and left some of the old tendrils in: chopped up as much as I can.
My brother, who is a perma wotsit or other reckons it all breaks down eventually. He even sticks a couple of old logs under his bed, every time he refreshes it. He reckons that it attracts beetles and worms ect.☻☻☻☻☻☻☻
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Well your brother would know. On the other hand I thought the ammonia helped to combat the initial nitrogen draw down from the breaking down process. I believe that as horse manure is not very strong it won’t do any harm itself, but it depends what kind of weed seeds it has, and also there can that initial nitrogen draw down. The composting kills the weed seeds so they don’t germinate. If it has nasty weed seeds you’ll never get them out of your garden bed.
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When those nasty weeds appear, I will give you a call, ‘Weedbuster’.
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Feel free. I’ll give you my hourly weeding rate.
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Quite right to point at the weed problem in horse poo, Voice; and it’s also correct to say that all poo is poo, even that humans -which the Italians in provoncale Italy divert to their vegie gardens.
However, I remember my pappy saying that horse poo (like human poo) is “too hot” and must be left idle a lot longer than other poo before planting anything on it; and that sheep poo is the best of all, for some reason, particularly the “authentic” droppings which one should get from a farm, rather than a nursery where the mixture is polluted or hybridised with other ingredients.
But there might well be a difference, perhaps even slight, between the poos of animals in different country because I remember him talking to his brothers, here in Oz, around the 70’s, I’d say, and compared the “strength” of the manures between the two countries. Even between the North and South of Greece.
I’ve just tossed some cow and sheep (from Bunnings; mother has a farmer deliver her huge quantities of sheep poo every couple of years) and either later today or tomorrow, I’ll be tilling the soil and again, leaving it alone for a few weeks before I start planting. Last year’s harvest was a bumpery one.
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You don’t think he might have been talking about chickens? That’s the hot one.
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So VL it seems as though the poo is from horses which don’t forage in open paddocks all the time. They probably get fed good hay, chaff and some other stuff which would all be seed free. General consensus seems that you ought to leave it for some time before planting – so either way getting the beds prepared now is the way to go. Sheep poo will compost quicker than horse poo because of the size of the droppings. I would be mixing it in with the existing soil, i.e. not spreading the poo as a single layer. Either way I am sure you will have a bumper crop. You must give us the occasional update.
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Viv, I know manure is not compost, it was a tongue in cheek comment to Voice’s reply to VL saying don’t you know …
I had a farm for fourteen years, everything was used in the compost, most of the manures are too strong to used straight out, unless you do it in the Autumn…
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Yes, Helvi – I thought you might be first to offer advice based on your many years of small scale farming. Experience is worth a lot and there is the learning by your mistakes. For example I built a magnificent composting arrangement next to a small tree I had planted. Seems I forgot about the tree growing and grew it did – completely overshadowed the bins and so they wound up with no sun and not much rain either. Built a new system in another location and the same thing happened again. I thought the tree was far enough away but I was wrong.
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Fresh horse (or any other) manure is great to spread in a spot where you want to kill the existing grass, and prepare the new bed, at the same time, simply spread newspapers, place a thick layer of poo, leave for six weeks, then fork over.
You can always hit any emerging weeds with some glyphosate!
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I’m not waiting 6 weeks, BIG. I want the world and I want it NOooooooWWW. Then a bit of organ music, or more likely as Warrigal pointed out Moog!!
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Bye the way. These are race horses, so they only have the best hay. My brother does say that one should be careful of the hormones that are given to horses. I can’t remeber why now. Killing the worms maybe? I’ll have to ring him.
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I was going to say who cares about the hormones since you’re not going to eat the stuff. On the other hand if you grow vegetables in it maybe you do sort of eat it. Anyway let us know when you’ve got it from the horse’s mouth.
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Well, unbelievably he replied within 3 days…herewith email.
No it’s the worm treatment they give to horses. It washes or composts out after a couple of weeks and does no harm. But if the poop looks a bit green, then it might still be present and can kill the worms go through it. Not always though, I have put the occasional bag in my worm farm to top it up and it went OK. I just bought 5 bags of horse poop and three cane bails for my new patch, smells like home .
The advantage of horse manure over cow’s is that it breaks down slower, so acts like a time-release – also has more fibre so doubles as mulch.
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Also horses are a lot pickier about what they eat than cows and sheep are – so you get far fewer weed seeds in their poop.
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VL, are the race horses more like the Lords, the aristocrats, of horse world. Maybe their poo doesn’t stink even…
My father only had some working horses, on the farm in Holland we had Shetland ponies, they always thought the grass was greener on the other side.
Maybe origininating from the harsh Shetland does it for you, makes one envious 🙂
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So there you have it. From the horse’s mouth so to speak 🙂
I must take off once more. Another job is to build a fence to keep out the spaniels!
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Helvi, I just caught your post. My cavs are called Duke & Prince 🙂 In keeping with their lineage Cavalier King Charles 🙂
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OMG VL. Blackface.
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Oh well. Since VL is ignoring me I’m off to file my nails.
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I’ll have to get T2 to give you some notification advice.
BTW,did you get the note about the worm treatment? It wasn’t hormones after all!!
☼☼☺☺☻☻◌ ◙ ♥.. ♥
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Yes I noticed. But now I’m thinking, what about the performance enhancing drugs?
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Well, if the cos are tall, stiff and thick, I’ll find out 😉
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There goes your keyboard again.
Watch out for snails that run away.
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☞ this way.
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Voice, the only ‘notification advice’ I can give you is, whatever you do, don’t turn it on for the Dot!
😉
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Hung, what you’re describing is “an opinion” not bigotry and we’re all entitled to those.
Laddie, I only ever use the Oxford Dictionary for a source; not the Macquarie, or any other dictionary. In fact, I have the actual 20 vol, latest (2nd) edition. It’s my constant companion. I have given elsewhere a summation of what it says about the word and, to summarise even further now, hypocrisy is only one part of the meaning. A more important part is the bit that says that a bigot is someone who knows his views are wrong and harmful to others but continues to push them upon others. “Push” being the operative word. Hung’s thoughts aren’t bigotry because, in the end, he will abide by the rules of the society he’s a part of, ie, the rules of Democracy, which, rightly or wrongly, are firmly seated on numbers: The majority wins.
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Look I agree entirely with you. You have summed it up better than I.
But one would expect that. I am only a scribbler.
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In the Oxford dictionary it gives this.
Origin:
late 16th century (denoting a superstitious religious hypocrite): from French, of unknown origin.
I have just looked it up. It doesn’t say exactlyly my description, however that’s always been my interpretation. I’ll add to that–that the trait is normally exhibited all the time…to most things.
This rules you out of contention.
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“It doesn’t say exactlyly my description,”
Oh, laddie!
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You know full well, that I don’t spell check, you just have to accept it.
Actually I do sometimes…but then… “it’s always the same sometimes, isn’t it?”
ЖЯϢ
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Not the spelling that made me chuckle, lad. Not the spellink!
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Are you a good cook Lehan? If not, see VL. On his own word, he opened a restaurant first and then took cooking lessons.
I really wanted to get into the subsidised mairie (city council) cooking lessons in Paris, but never got selected. They were targeting people training as professionals but I still hoped. A lot of Americans do that Audrey Hepburn Cordon Bleu thing but it costs an arm and a leg.
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Hi Voice. It’s a very relevant point to me – I’m still trying to find my next thing to do. I always found restaurants an interesting prospect. But I am pretty sure I would not succeed with one, and for the same reason that my school didn’t work. I don’t have good social connections, I don’t encourage them. There needs to be a change somehow, but I’m not sure what. Do I need to become more social? Or do I need to find an occupation that will work even with the Un-Social…
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Well … unless you aspire to be the object of a PhD psychology thesis in unsocial behaviour (and how well does THAT pay?) or perhaps periodically donate regrowable body parts, I would hazard a guess at option 1. Of course, you might want to think about it for another year or two before deciding, because you have so much to lose by becoming more social … although it isn’t clear to me exactly what that might be … perhaps contemplation time, which IS really valuable, but can become counter-productive and after all you can always get that back gradually, kind of like reintroducing chocolate back into your diet in a controlled way after going cold turkey for a while.
But it does seem like a huge jump to suddenly open a restaurant. Hey, what about Masterchef. 🙂
I can’t help wondering whether you might still have some bridges back to your previous occupation in some form, even though you might feel you have burnt them people can sometimes be understanding. Or total bitches as the case might be. You can but have a go. In one job where I allowed myself to be the target of the boss bully (I was going through some incredibly stressful personal stuff at the time and just couldn’t deal with it) one of the staff offered to give me a reference so I wouldn’t have to ask the boss. You can fudge it out sometimes.
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Well I don’t think I’d have the temperament for Masterchef. And then, the rewards don’t look so fantastic on those programs, considering what you’re giving them (free “fresh” actors to exploit).
I have applied for 51 jobs. It’s becoming quite meditative. Each time I need to describe myself in a capable and intelligent light. Each time I imagine myself in another place, having another life. I look at the houses there, in the real estate pages online, and imagine myself in them. I think of the focus my life would have in that job, and how it will contribute to my larger life, whether it can help me to save my house in Japan. But then I get another few letters of rejection, and I start to feel kind of expendable again.
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But look at this wonderful possibility! The chinese restaurant at the end of the road, on the water’s edge, just near where the buses stop. You just wait for people to pull up, beaten up trucks with carseats tied to the windows with bits of rope, looking for the boats. All those hopes pinned on faces as they drag their bags into the chinese restaurant, stack them up under the window. Sit down and wait with the ticket man, who’s drinking lemon juice and water with spoonfulls of sugar. Some people order a few dishes while they wait, some people rent the rooms out the back for an hour, for a wash or a nap. When the boats come, they bring a bit of fish with them, swap it for a kip.
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No, not a kipper. A kip.
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But this plan has the same failing that all the others did.
In order to stop yourself from going mad or broke, you need partners.
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I know exactly what you mean about the imagining things. You invest emotionally, put in the effort, and then POW.
Don’t include your age. Shorten your resume if it goes back too far. You’re probably already tailoring your resume for the jobs you are most interested in.
Put a positive spin on your absence from employment. You’re probably already doing that, maybe describing it as a failed business. People know that businesses fail sometimes, and give you points for having a go. You could put it down to your lack of business expertise and say that’s why you’ve enrolled in a course. I might be way wide of the mark here; just riffing.
Do you get to interview stage? 51 isn’t a lot really. It’s a goodly number, don’t get me wrong. But it’s way too early to be despondent. Then there’s the jobs you think are a good match, you get to second interview stage, and bomb out. Then you get offered the job by the people you thought there was no match. Or you get the job that looked really good and find out it’s nothing as described. But it’s a stepping stone to financial security and you’re bargaining position is enhanced while you look for something else.
On second thoughts, have you tried buying lottery tickets. 🙂
What the heck, might as well do private Japanese tutoring while you’re looking.
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Lehan, I know what you mean about not encouraging social connections. I find that, at the end of a working day, counselling, advising, trying to sound encouraging, or, yesterday, stopping myself from slapping the 15 year old ‘father’ of an infant, that I don’t really feel like communicating.
I think that I let a lot of those connections lapse (and, being an uxorious sort of chap), let Mrs M carry on in the social sphere….Anyhoo, have rediscovered some old school friends, through, of all things, Facebook, and am refinding those connections. This probably doesn’t help, but I think I understand the way you feel.
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I find myself not feeling a lack in my lack of social connections, M. And I’m very happy about that. If I were to go back to having social connections I would lose that, and then I would feel nervous or sad when I didn’t have social connections again. I don’t know that I want to lose that lack. It’s somehow very filling.
Perhaps I should stop thinking about “partner” and think “paid cook” or “part-time staffer”. Then I would just need some more money, I could forget about the madness.
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…If I could just work out what COUNTS for popularity.
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(then I wouldn’t even need the money).
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Haven’t you read ‘Death of a Salesman’ Lehan… Popularity is never enough… and one always needs money! (Well, this one does, anyway!)
😉
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Of course, in terms of ‘social connections’ having money is far more important than mere ‘popularity’; but now we’re talking not about ‘money’, but rather about Money! (And ‘Old Money’ would seem to be much better than ‘New Money’…)
😉
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Lehan, I like the way you write.
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Lovely painting and story, Lehan… I think I’ll start with some dim sims, followed by steak and black-bean sauce with steamed rice, thank you…
Once again I find myself agreeing with Atomou’s assessment of last night’s QandA… Ato, I think if this benighted country has a left wing, you and I and a few other piglets are it mate!
😉
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I was on the verge of becoming left wing. I had tussles in my mind; anguish even. Then along came Rudd & Julia, with lieutenant Combet.
I came back to my senses. The natural human way is preferable 😉
Religion is the root of all evil!
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“Religion is the root of all evil!”
That’s printed in ginormous letters on every flag and standard of the Left, laddie!
Stop the bullshit and come on over!
Just a few summer classes on the topic and you’ll be right.
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P.S.
I’m prepared to spend my whole summer on the mission, laddie. Enrollments are open now.
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But the right is needed. Who will build all the castles and palaces? Buildings of intrinsic everlasting beauty.
We don’t want to be marching around in grey suits, recruiting innocent bystanders for committees.
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I don’t think you need to worry on that score, Vee Ell… there’ll always be a surfeit of right-wingers…
Besides, the left is much more friendly (I don’t count the current members of the ALP; they can hardly be described as ‘left-wing’ or even ‘leftist’…) I mean, I can’t help but remember how friendly those Russian dudes were that I told you about in the Duck and Drake…
On the right wing you know you have no friends at all ’cause everyone just wants to stab everyone else in the back, if only for the sake of reducing competition! Talk about a ‘rat-race’… And, you know, for a self-confessed ‘right-winger’, you have some very leftish tastes in music…
😉
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Lovely story, Lehan and, once again, a very engaging work of art.
Heaps of kudoses and encouragement.
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Nice story and nice painting. Lehan.
The dreaded N word got some surprising results at last night’s Q&A. Who would have thought Clive Palmer be a champion of the rights of refugees?
In fact the whole panel, except for Sophie Mirrabella, all, kept mentioning , a bit coyly at times, the banned word ‘on-shore’..
Sophie of course, with the charm of a Sims-Metal truck, kept on spouting the liberal’s dogma of ‘no’ and more ‘no’, harking back to the good old Howard’s years, relishing the Tampa and the effectiveness of turning the boats back..
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But she was crapped upon though,Gez, wasn’t she? Good and bloody proper!
Remember when Howes said something like “we’re fight for…” (something virtuous, I can’t remember what). And she piped up, ever so glibly -like a Sims-Metal truck, one may metaphorise- and said, “that’s the trouble with you guys, you’re just fighting! It’s not about fighting… it’s not about fighting, blah, crappy blah…”
To which a lady in the crowd shot her hand up and -for once, thank you Tony Jones!- said to Mirabella, “if it’s not about fighting, then could someone tell Tony Abbott?”
THE most precious moment of the night!
Could have given quids for that one!
However! Never trust Clive Palmer, Gez! Not in a bzillion years. He’s a fattened up Abbott.
His heart was not in the camp of the humanitarians but in his body mass. He wants to get even fatter… By bringing in more cheap labour. He knows very well that a migrant is highly unlikely to join a union. Migrants are very vulnerable, unsure of the laws, frightened that they’ll be deported. They arrive here and all they want is to make money quickly, buy a house and get on with their lives, away from politics. They are usually afraid to do the wrong thing by anyone and most particularly their bosses, so they become the most compliant factory fodder. This country is so right wing that workers have bugger all protection from laws. It’s the next generation that might get the confidence to develop a voice.
Howes -ya gotta sorta love the guy- pointed out how a country like Germany can have a huge union movement AND a huge manufacturing industry (third in the world) but his words, I believe, went off into the void of cosmic space.
Anyhow, it was good to hear Clive Palmer’s words and then the big applause that followed them. But I would trust the shitter as far as I could kick him… and you can guess how far I could kick him!
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Ato, no one trusts Palmer, still it was good to hear…
Oh that Mirabella’s missus, she is something else, I feel sorry for Mr Mirabella. I wonder if Viv can tell us what he is like.
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I don’t think Vivie conducts dalliances with such moral midgets.
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I did not say it ato, I thought that Mirabella and hubbie live in Viv’s area. When we lived on the farm, we often run into Prue and Barnett in Goulburn coffee places. I have to say Prue was always most friendly towards us, and Barnett looked like a harmless old godger.
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Looks can be deceiving H
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I’ve seen the first 5 minutes of Q&A on iView and boy was it depressing. Going by that, Abbott has offered to work with Labor to achieve their joint objectives but only if it’s done in such a way as to cater to his own testosterone levels. Combet replied in like fashion, but who can blame him really; if Abbott really did approach it in the way the media is reporting it (and they do seem focused on reporting every political event as if it were a move in a boxing match), that doesn’t leave any realistic alternative reply.
Abbott looks pretty stupid really. If there was any possibility, no matter how remote, that he could convince the Independents that he would work with them in good faith, he would have to at an absolute minimum be able to make a credible bipartisan effort here.
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I asked David Barnett (on his blog) if he used to write for the Goulburn Penny Post as his writing has got a whiff of provincialism; the Mods did not like it.
I see that you have been busy on the Drum, Hung.
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Yes bashing my way into roars of bigotry, great fun. Now I am not trolling however I find some of the posters even bigger bigots than me, can you imagine that 🙂 They howl me down however at the same time display the same attributes. Plus this gives me something to do in between sleeps and housework.
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Of course, the libs could always try and do a Lazarus on the White Australian Policy. I often wonder if the boat people were pommies they would be sent to some forgotten island?
That would be a good project to try out for some journo and a bunch of Afghan bachground pommies.
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Yes Hung, I noticed that Mirrorr-man had another go at you about being a bigot.
Something has been lost over here in the use of the word. I tried to explain it the other day to atomou. In English (my language, not Australian English), it is usually applied when the perpetrator is hypocritical. In other words someone is (or pretends to be) tolerant of black people, but secretly despises them. Or intolerant of prostitutes but partaketh.
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Thanks VL. I am not against gays however I feel that them getting married is destroying the social fabric of our society.
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VL, does your English, the English English, have four r’s in the word “mirror”?
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No! However my typewriter is made in China 😉
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Hung, I didn’t realise that we had ‘social fabric’!
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Yes. It’s called lawn 🙂
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Helvi, I have not met Mr Mirrabella but he was married before and has a kid or two. Think he is ex-army. I can only assume that he must be of a similar character to Sophie as he married her and so on. They had some planning dispute with Wangaratta Council having bought there after a known new planning zone had been implemented. They objected after the fact etc. Fortunately they lost. They are the usual hypocrites. So, peas in a pod I’d say (a la VL !).
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Ex-army, someone’s ex-husband, just right for the lovely Sophie…
I had to laugh at VL putting you and algy in the same pod 🙂
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They have the same ‘politburo’ thinking.
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VL, Sophie and her ex-army husband?!
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No Algy & Viv. I only know about Sophie from this blog. I know that she is a politician and that all of you think that she is rude and loud mouthed. I don’t need to know anything else.
I’m more concerned with my garden and family. My politics are confined to the general. IE, we need people of calibre running the economy. Not union members. I’m not a great one for the parochialism of politics, including all of their names. Just the general stuff.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months.
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For instance I don’t dislike Julia & Wayne for being incompetent. I see them as out of their depth and dull. However, to find that in this century, we have dinosaurs like Ludwig running the country behind our backs is sickening. I repeat sickening.
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