Much comment has concerned Erich Abetz’s Nazi relos his cretinism, his racism, etc. With good reason. But what does this say about the Liberal Party’s indolence about checking prospective members being vetted: bugger all?!
It was indeed awful. Christie should have killed him off some other way. Instead she wrote a piece which went far to ruin everything which was good about the character.
VIVIENNE: I completely agree with you.
Do you know if Agatha (?) (sic) Christie actually wrote this stinker, or was it BASED on one of her stories? I would have thought David Suchet would have been too good an actor, and too rich a person to have anything to do with this shoddy production/end. Ditto Captain Hastings.
She wrote “Curtain”, Poirot’s last case, during the war and then put it away. The idea was that it would be published posthumously but her American publishers convinced her to dust it off some time in the seventies if memory serves. The book garnered all sorts of awards and was very well reviewed; but I agree with the consensus here, the TV adaptation was incoherent and even Suchet’s impeccable reading of Poirot with all the character’s dainty posturing, compulsive fastidiousness and ego, couldn’t make it any better.
That having been said, I did enjoy the production design. The sense of gloom and decay as the country house murder meets its maker. The final passing of the era of privilege that spawned both Christie and that other great chronicler of country house life, PG Wodehouse.
The production of this disaster was less than unique. And the photography seemed to be caught between the past, past and the present, dying. Well it finished me off in fifteen minutes.
Hiya V, love it hearing from you. Sending this message to you by mobile as away from home & desktop. Talk about a shock it was so bad I thought I’d lost it & couldn’t ratiocinate. Only caring for thee makes me write this last word on Poirot. Tee hee. Hope everything’s coming up roses for you. Hope in fact you like roses (but you know what I mean). I have another story coming up here soon btw.
Hello, GO. Interesting if you saw Q&A. Re the UN; you put forward some awesome scenarios. That will not happen. I reckon it is so terrible what is coming out that something will happen in a court of law surely, surely soon. Have a good day, Gez.
I gave you The Crimea; Loius Nowra; Tennyson; Putin; Atalntis and Stephen Hawkins.
A veritable feast……Instead of using utensils, yopu picked up the plate an guzzled it getting mashed potato in your nostrils and anchovies dribbling down your jowls.
Ok Viv, I’ll have l a look at your blog.
BTW, just an alert here for anyone that only watches ABC news about fireman rescuing cats.
Putin is moving into the Crimea. Well back in, of course his rellies were kicked out in The Crimean War.
You’ll will remember that of course, especially those of you familiar with Tennyson’s Charge of The Light Brigade. Remember when I visited Tennyson’s home and draped a PIGSARMS TEE shirt around the shingle .
The kindly editor here posted it in article (then). it might have disappeared by now I suppose.
Anyways keep up the happiness regime.
I listened to S.M : Shaun Micallef, on the radio today. He’s not only funny, he’s very bright too.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
A very long time ago there was a discussion that I recall about some problem that befell a number of posts.
If you want to find where your posts are Jayall, you go to the column on the RHS of the page where you have a folder with posts in it. Under the heading ‘Rooms at The Pig’s Arms’.
Here’s what I’m watching. it certainly will take some of the paltry bitterness, negativity and small mindedness out of your spleens. SBS: fallowed by Stephen Hawkins. Now HE should have something to bitch about, but like a lot of us – he’s too fuvken busy.
On SBS now, beautiful.
“A team of French researchers go in search of the lost city of Atlantis and explore its links to the Minoan civilisation, which disappeared around 3500 years ago.
Long synopsis: A team of French researchers go in search of the lost city of Atlantis and explore its links to the Minoan civilisation which disappeared around 3500 years ago. Scientists have uncovered evidence that the island of Crete, home of the Minoans, was hit by a massive tsunami around this time. Experts draw parallels between the Asian tsunami of 2004 with the wreckage left behind by the wave, which may have destroyed the Minoan society. CGI special effects are also used to render the impact this tsunami would have had on the ancient civilisation.
Where’s a tsunami when you need one? A depth charge in Lake Burley Griffin may suffice.
Of course, one of ato’s mates stated it: Plato. It is a fictional island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in c. 360 BC.
There’s a French dude on the programme, who’s taken 25 years studying Plato and translating it. he looked as if he had never been out of the library.
Poor old Reza Berati, bludgeoned to death it seems in the Kevin’s Kamp.
He was studying to be an architect, so his cousin says. he came to try and get in to Australia as he was told that it was Eldorado. Got a whack in the head instead. His cousin said that he knew you could (possibly) stay in Kamps for 10 years, however it was worth the wait????
What on earth was he thinking he could have gone in to Turkey and designed a flat roofed mosque or something.
The world is a peculiar place when people are prepared to spend their relatives money travelling 8000ks, stay in an ALP Kamp for 10 years, just to became an Australian Architect, instead of a Persian Planner.
Mind you people have patience ———- look at The Pyramids and The Great Wall of China.
Who told Abbott and Morrison that they can’t process the asylum seekers on the mainland?
Was it the God?
Kevin’s gone, and Labor is in the opposition now: they are Abbott’s responsibility now,
Reza died under Morrison’s care.
Who told Abbott and Morrison that they can’t process the asylum seekers on the mainland?
Bill Shorten!
Even when questioned directly, Bill Shorten seems unable to provide a definitive opinion. In an ABC interview on February 7th, he says, “In terms of the asylum seekers, our position is, what is the government doing? … we would just like them to tell us what they’re doing.”
Do some research you two. I’ve told you this before. You look follish wehen your contradicting your leader.
And for the record, I and my whole family, abhor the Kamps. The quicker they are fucking well closed the better. It cannot come soon enough*.
Under The ALP, it would be doubling in size now instead of diminishing.
How is it you cant’ see that?
* Just to r”epeat” that, because I feel that I need to …IT (the closure) CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH! Did you understand that?
Jules, you have a strange way of ultimately expressing sympathy. Your comments remain pretty nasty and yet you wonder why some of us get pissed off with you.
I admit a wry appreciation of your cartoon regarding the dramatic upturn of the economy immediately following the export to North Korea of Australia’s politicians.
I have become a hopeless disciple of double glazing. For days now I look at nothing but web-sites on that subject, even sinking as low as watching videos. One video has a lady extolling the benefits of double glazing. It is one of those you-tube things, home made and unedited. You can tell she had her hair specially done and mum must have done her make-up. Her voice isn’t synchronised with the movement of her lips either. I have watched this video several times in absolute fascination. She ends up saying her life has become so much more ‘comfortable’ and shows this by shutting a panel of double glazing. She smiles a beatific smile worthy of a mother Theresa. I am sure she will go to a heaven full of double glazed panels.
You might think watching a video on double glazing a sure sign Gerard has tipped over the edge. You are not far wrong. I have tried the rest, but it lets in so much noise. Watching the world in the single panel mode is now akin to living in a charnel house. Not a day goes by and another slaughter fronts us on the TV. The 29 or so private school students slaughtered in Uganda. How can this happen? The warring sides in Syria, children’s corpses tossed aside. “This footage might disturb some viewers”, the newsreaders keep saying.
Even the weather report is fraught with calamities of an heretofore unknown scale. People are perched on roof-tops in the UK, others are snowbound in their cars with mobiles and tablets the only thing that keeps them alive and in touch with their survivors. In Australia the drought is getting its grip back again. Dry water holes are the order of the day together with sheep and cow carcasses. I sometimes wonder if journalists have their car-boots packed with sheep carcasses, plastic flowers and teddy bears to add photographic poignancy to their stories?
The real disadvantage of viewing the world through single glazing locally is how Australia treats its refugees. The spectacle of who should apologize to whom over the lack of information coming from our government while a refugee got murdered whilst supposedly under our care. “We mustn’t let the ‘floodgates’ open.”
I would have thought the 700.000 refugees fleeing into Turkey and another 700.000 into Jordan are floodgates. You would think a politician got killed instead of a refugee on Manus Island. It is all so bloody awful. Who would have thought a retirement could be so brutally hampered by almost anything going on in public. Where are the good stories? Even our winter Olympics have been a limp affair. It’s no wonder people turn to double glazing.
We have meekly assuaged our conscience by a monthly donation to Médecins sans Frontières. It’s about the only thing we can do against the overwhelming plights of so many millions. I perhaps subconsciously hunker after a kind of double glazing of life excluding all that misery.
For those that can afford and want to do something, here is the donating web-site of Médecins sans Frontières
I have been doing a lot of Mindfullness meditation of late, and I have made a decision to not watch the NEWS on TV any more. I’m one of the viewers who do find those images disturbing. Especially the ones perpetrated under the auspices of a government I didn’t vote for and never fuckin’ will. These people are below contempt and just behind them in the contemptuous line are our former old mates of the so-called left (yeah, left with no ideology beyond grasping and retaining power at any cost).
First abandoned the Drum, then QandA, then 7;30 report, then the ABC News, then SBS News, then ABC radio (except Classic FM), then the Fairfax Herald (stopped reading the Australian in mid 1970s – guess why).
I am starting to not worry that I will have no offing idea what’s going on. I can work it out when I laugh with Shaun Micallef.
Yes Emm, it has to come to that. No news on TV anymore. I put the button on mute till the weather forecast. Even that is now in question. Micallef is about the one thing we still watch together with a serial such as Poirot (if it is not too complicated) or that brilliant little French sketch with insects crawling about. Is it called IKON? Even Milo watches that one.
Me too. I fell asleep on the couch, woke up and it was still going. So I turned it off and toddled off to bed. It was all over the shop and boring boring. I did manage to record Tim Winton’s 17 director magnum opus – The Turning the other night. I’ve watched three of them so far. Much more compelling viewing!
I really appreciate reading your comment, Gez and Therese Trouserzoff’s. Vivienne, my little boy’s legs running barely touched the ground when the Dr Who music came on and he ran away. You will see this flustered child. Terrified he was, little man, Amazing a composer could have such power, eh. So much to say I’m sorry for to my children. No-one understands a child as a mother can do.
Gez, I feel the same about your essays. Not that I think of you as my mother. However, I do think of you as an essential, someone whose place in my personal society I see is empty when you are not around. Double glazing!! Having knowledge of it only through the stories of a friend who sold double glazing in the UK for a period when he married an English lass, your imagery in this comment places my nose on the very glass you intend your heedful and respectful reader to see through. I have to pay attention and think through your meaning to understand it. I love this imagery. I so appreciate you, Gez. Thank you.
Gez, et al, I’m fascinated by double glazing, as well as some of the new sound and heat reduction glasses. Great for houses. I’m with you in terms of ‘mental double glazing’, ignoring the news (except when Mrs M has it on and I yell at the f$%^ing bastards), and going into the study to listen to on line lectures on astrobiology, exoplanets, epidemics, anything to shut out the mental ‘noise’!
I do look forward to Capaldi as Dr Who, having just watched some William Hartnell from 1965!
Big M;
Yes, there is a lot in glass. My daughter lived in one of those apartments at Wolli Creek. The outside noise was terrible… till one shut the glass doors after which it was whisper quiet. It was some acoustic glass. I suppose similar to that at the airport terminal. One can see planes landing and taking off a hundred metres away and yet hear nothing.
We are thinking installing double glazing not for noise but keep in heat. Any ideas?
As for double glazing keeping out violence, I think Emm shows the way. Shut out all news and listen to plenty of Algernon’s music with a good dose of your wit and that of Hung one on and on..
Shoe – do you like Doc Who? I love the music – headphones on make it even better.
I wish I knew about double glazing when I built our house. It would have been so good to have.
Yes, head phones are a good invention. I have a pair of those and all I hear is just the music or the dialogue. Very handy if one is deaf but not so good for visual impairment.
Headphones are wonderful and the luxurious and comfortable the better. A Sony 200buck or so pair would suit me fine. I don’t watch Dr Who, Vivienne and think I would have to start at the beginning if that is possible to know what everybody is referring to who have been watching it for years. I feel it is hopeless.
If it makes you feel good I would have been happy to have been your mother. You wrote a lovely post and I am moved by your kindness. The double glazing allegory came to me when getting information about real double glazing. With all the things going on in the world I wonder if a double glazing should be put into place in front of our brain filtering out all images of cruelty and only allow through wisps of clouds and angel songs.
My Mum! Wow, Gez, a sort of adoption at the farm really and we are even from different countries how cute the photos will look of us, what do they call those animal friends, interspecies. But I think it suits piglet mums and their adopted babies from different parts of the planet as equally as elephants and kittens, zebras and tortoises. Now there’s a funny word, I would say and you would say, No matter about that just at the very minute, I have some lovely Dutch home made cookies and a great big mug of Trotters for you, come and have it and turn off the television, please. How remarkable. 🙂 XXOO LOL
My post to you Shoe went and dived somewhere down below.
If it makes you feel good I would have been happy to have been your mother. You wrote a lovely post and I am moved by your kindness. The double glazing allegory came to me when getting information about real double glazing. With all the things going on in the world I wonder if a double glazing should be put into place in front of our brain filtering out all images of cruelty and only allow through wisps of clouds and angel songs.
The Saturday Paper looks brilliant. I will love watching this project. Regardless envious having collaborated with some others to design a national paper and a launch plan. The key member of our directorate turned out was an illegal unbeknownst jeeeez just to think about it, guffaw or chuckle as you might. So I come from reading Malcolm Turnbull’s launch speech* – a little bit cream puffy – and bit classiclally IMHO off the rails suggesting alone ‘It is too early to assume that digital revenue will step into the breach in the ongoing fall in print advertising revenues ‘.
Anyway so be that. Greater minds than mine have looked at digital revenue and just because I never feel confident that Malcolm has applied himself to the issues of online use and ‘who goes there’ is no reason for me to feel mistrustful Malcolm can be thought a last word on anything digital. Don’t anybody think that, really I think, whatever polly persuasion is addictive at your breakfast table.
‘Australia’s boat people crisis’ by Richard Flanagan after subscribing $19.95 for a three month starter was my next choice and utter delight. My brain is challenged, confronted to think. Wish I was there. Good on you, Emmjay for putting up the support for the launch as headline at the Pig’s Arms.
I subscribed this morning. I’m all sorted. Flanagan’s piece was great – got a lot of comments too. I first wanted to be sure that both computers at home could log in with the one subscription. No problems. I signed up for 12 months as encouragement. Better deal anyway.
Excellent. We have contributed our voice. Good to know that you can access it anywhere. As you must. It is excellent i could get a short-term subscription. So many of those deals claiming it will cost you x amounts for 3 months trooly rooly mean that after you have pair up for ten years, three months will be valued at … LOL. GROAN. Subscriptioning in there was delightfully easy without time wasting. 🙂
Strange. My recording of the show does not have this clip piece in it. Also noted that the date says 28 Feb. The show was on Wednesday night. Where did you get this from?
Ah, it’s actually from early in February. Still don’t know how I missed it – might have been night family here for dinner and we talked through the whole thing.
Hi Viv – youtube. There are lots there. I didn’t recall it on TV either – maybe they also post the out-takes on youtube. Enjoy the lot. I lost two hours this morning – for no reason I can recall 🙂
By the way ‘the Saturday Paper’ is brilliant. The tide has turned against the Morrisons of this Australia. I feel unusually optimistic this morning. Perhaps it is the rain.
This kind of casual racism is gobsmacking. Years (decades) ago I went out with the son of a post-war Croatian immigrant. He occasionally moaned about his father and father’s mates at the Croatian Club sitting around moaning about Anglos and various other suspect nationalities from the usual Euro rivalries. He was studying Chinese and spoke Mandarin and was really into aspects of Chinese culture – I didn’t realise how extraordinary that was at the time. Anyway – it mostly wears off in a couple of generations.
The racism is well alive in the Morrison country, I hear this daily from my less educated Liberal acquaintances, the ones I regard as friends are ashamed of Abbott& Morrison’s politics…
Well I was still saving up my recording of this to watch tonight. But of course I had to click on this vid clip. Brilliant isn’t it. Odious cretin is still too kind. I had missed that #$%..xxxx&rd using those words. I truly am gobsmacked.
Abetz at his abyss. Geez, if ever a migrant boy went the wrong way it would have to be him. Talk about assimilation!
Of course, thank god for Micallef, he is a genius.
I’m somewhat surprised that someone from a family that had links to the Nazi Gestapo and had an uncle tried and convicted of war crimes, would ever be allowed to emigrate here.
You can’t be serious. How many Germans who emigrated here after WWII wouldn’t have had a relative who was a Nazi? It was his great uncle BTW who was convicted of war crimes.
Yes I can voice, If he were from say a Southern European family or Spanish with connections to the fascists then they would have been refused the right to emigrate at the time that the family emigrated.
Who would have been denied the right to emigrate? The fascists or their relatives? If their relatives, how far would it have extended? Children? Nephews?
Uncle Otto, was the Vishy French ambassador, and a confident of Hitler and von Rippentrop, He was no ordinary Nazi. A wide reaching banning here would have been appropriate.
Eric’s father was Otto’s nephew. They banned immigration of adult nephews of Nazis? Not as far as I know. It doesn’t sound likely, given as I said, the number of Germans who would have had Nazi relatives. Were adult nephews of ANY Nazis stopped from immigrating for that fact alone? Hitler’s nephew went to the USA; just before the war though.
Abetz’ racism sounds to me more like common or garden Euro racism than Nazi influence. The kind that’s led to the rise of extreme right wing political parties throughout Europe today. Obviously Nazi racism didn’t appear out of a void, it was just a particularly sickening and extreme form.
Who would be denied right to emigrate. I had this ‘conversation’ with a disbelieving Lib on the Drum when I told him about the language testing being used to keep out undesirables and people not quite of the right colour. A native speaker of say Italian was given the test in Russian. The language test could be misused this way – it wasn’t illegal to do that. Our immigration people in various countries did that famously. No immediate reference to it on the web. But I do recall it received a few good and lengthy discussions on some news or current affairs or docos I saw way back. This is answering your whole question Voice but there were ways and means.
Glad you realised the is was meant to be an isn’t. I think it might in part because no one knows what they got up to and what directions migration officers may or may not have received.
Schweitzer, Robert and Perkoulidis, Shelley A. and Krome, Sandra L. and Ludlow, Christopher N. (2005) Attitudes towards Refugees: The Dark Side of Prejudice in Australia . Australian Journal of Psychology 57(3):pp. 170-179.
How sad to put up that link. You could have substituted just about any country name for Australia and come up with a similar article. But what is the point?
Is it about attitudes from one lot of refugees to the others, or from native-born Australians? Or did you just read the title? Crikey, the soccer wars in Sydney.
There are people who emigrated here in the 1950s who STILL make racist statements about Anglos, feeling justified by ill-treatment 50 years ago, and make casual racist statements deriving from hyper-awareness of nationality practically every day of the week. Some of the saddest are those who actually believed their parents about how the bad treatment they got was because Australians are particularly racist, and are now flailing about miserably and totally incapable of processing the facts about how their parents’ compatriots have treated refugees in their turn.
It is a valuable study. Thanks Gerard. For me the relevance is the problems that some people continue to have with certain migrants has been around a long time. Britain came to it more recently when they had to open their door to their Empire countries and then even more recently with the Europeans because of economic alliance. However, just because many countries have their own racial ‘problems’ should not mean we don’t examine our own. Fortunately in Australia most older cohorts of migrants and their ‘problems’ seem to evaporate and get replaced with new cohorts. I have never met any older migrants or their children complain about their treatment other than regular mentions of our bland and boring food at the time in places like Bonegilla. All of Bonegilla Migrant hostels info is now part of a museum and just this week many migrants who first landed in Australia went back to Bonegilla for reunions. I do personally know (friends) who started Aussie life at Bonegilla – two of them helped me build my house.
Oh voice get off your high horse, I have a southern European name, yet my family has been here since the 1840’s (at least). I endured racism on a daily basis growing up, I was persecuted at school, I had a Jewish teacher who went mad through her hatred, all because of a name. (What I experienced was nothing compared to my father).You know where most of it came from, nearly exclusively from 10 pound poms. I literally grew up hating my name, being called wog day in day out. I had one pom at high school who couldn’t even talk to you without wog wog wog. One day I said to him you know George there’s one thing I’ll be that you’ll never be and that’s Australian. A week later he left the school. It was only after school that I learnt to embrace my name, unfortunately I lost a lot though.
Yep, you’d have to include a lot of those 10 pound poms in the category of racist immigrants. Not all, obviously. That would be racist. Also incorrect.
As I said earlier, it mostly grows out in a couple of generations.
I am a first generation Australian on my father’s side and second on my mother’s. My prejudice colours my perceptions and I want my prejudice uncoloured by understanding it inclusive discussion about it. I think like so. My prejudice is I was raised to understand my Scottishness is not ‘Anglo’. My relationship to Australia is I am a migrant’s child and migrants’ grandchild. When I was a child I was taunted by packs of children taking the mickey out of the way I enunciated and my looks (get your mother to paint your lips with lipstick didja didja …and I will leave out the name of the racial characteristic my full mouth was supposed to represent followed by the chanted word ‘lips’)…that has affected me badly…these kids were little Anglos and certainly weren’t the children of the European migrants I was raised to speak well of, as I was to speak of any group anyway.
I didn’t need much incentive other than raw experience to understand behind the uncompromising diplomacy I was taught was a matter of necessity and a war that began it. Quite a number of wars I was to learn about as more consequences in a multi-racial society, repeated generation after generation, came to my attention at that local level. I co-exist with ‘Anglos’ in warm and productive relationships. I am not one. An ‘Anglo’ I mean. I can live with that. Being silenced I cannot live with on behalf of anyone else’s misplaced sensitivities about their race or any other person’s anymore than I can tolerate an indigenous Australian person’s grief or experience being silenced with regard to some other persons’ racial sensitivities. Racism is deliberate perpetration of harm or personal slight directed at individuals or groups without rational intent or origin. That is absolutely different from anything I describe in the foregoing.
Gerard: Thanks for your reply. I knew, or thought I did, Abetz to be German but I came across a scrawled note from myself-work that out-to the effect his religion is Dutch Reformed Church.
Shaun, I don’t care how your parents came here, I’m glad they did….maybe we can send Abetz back where he came from, let the receiver pay for his fares….
Venise Alstergren said:
Much comment has concerned Erich Abetz’s Nazi relos his cretinism, his racism, etc. With good reason. But what does this say about the Liberal Party’s indolence about checking prospective members being vetted: bugger all?!
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Venise Alstergren said:
‘SHOE & VIVIENNE: The final episode of Poirot was banal, smaltzy (sic) cringe making vomit. I lasted for about fifteen minutes.
HELVITYNI: Keep up the good thoughts…while you are about it you might consider returning Tony Rabbott to Pomsville?
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vivienne29 said:
It was indeed awful. Christie should have killed him off some other way. Instead she wrote a piece which went far to ruin everything which was good about the character.
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Venise Alstergren said:
VIVIENNE: I completely agree with you.
Do you know if Agatha (?) (sic) Christie actually wrote this stinker, or was it BASED on one of her stories? I would have thought David Suchet would have been too good an actor, and too rich a person to have anything to do with this shoddy production/end. Ditto Captain Hastings.
Cheers
V
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Googlehoover said:
She wrote “Curtain”, Poirot’s last case, during the war and then put it away. The idea was that it would be published posthumously but her American publishers convinced her to dust it off some time in the seventies if memory serves. The book garnered all sorts of awards and was very well reviewed; but I agree with the consensus here, the TV adaptation was incoherent and even Suchet’s impeccable reading of Poirot with all the character’s dainty posturing, compulsive fastidiousness and ego, couldn’t make it any better.
That having been said, I did enjoy the production design. The sense of gloom and decay as the country house murder meets its maker. The final passing of the era of privilege that spawned both Christie and that other great chronicler of country house life, PG Wodehouse.
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Venise Alstergren said:
Thanks for your input to my comment.
The production of this disaster was less than unique. And the photography seemed to be caught between the past, past and the present, dying. Well it finished me off in fifteen minutes.
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sandshoe said:
Hiya V, love it hearing from you. Sending this message to you by mobile as away from home & desktop. Talk about a shock it was so bad I thought I’d lost it & couldn’t ratiocinate. Only caring for thee makes me write this last word on Poirot. Tee hee. Hope everything’s coming up roses for you. Hope in fact you like roses (but you know what I mean). I have another story coming up here soon btw.
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Venise Alstergren said:
‘SHOE: Your taste in puns is as bad as mine. I enjoy your blogs a lot.
Cheer
V
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helvityni said:
VENISE, do not worry ,my rage is increasing daily, sometimes hourly 🙂
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Venise Alstergren said:
HELVITYNI: Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. It’s been a frantically busy day.
Multiple cheers
V
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Venise Alstergren said:
Atta girl! Sorry to be late in replying had a computer glitch, and a pinched nerve in my leg.
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gerard oosterman said:
Is it time for the UN to step into Manus Island to protect the prisoners from murder under Australia’s care?
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sandshoe said:
Hello, GO. Interesting if you saw Q&A. Re the UN; you put forward some awesome scenarios. That will not happen. I reckon it is so terrible what is coming out that something will happen in a court of law surely, surely soon. Have a good day, Gez.
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Jayell said:
OMG, wah a waste. Just got back here.
I gave you The Crimea; Loius Nowra; Tennyson; Putin; Atalntis and Stephen Hawkins.
A veritable feast……Instead of using utensils, yopu picked up the plate an guzzled it getting mashed potato in your nostrils and anchovies dribbling down your jowls.
Ok Viv, I’ll have l a look at your blog.
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Jayell said:
Go and see this to understand (get a perspective on yourselves) the Australian Psyche: Così: Loius Nowra. On in Brissie.
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Panna Cotta said:
No chance Jules. Home and away and ABC parliament puerility.
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Jayell said:
BTW, just an alert here for anyone that only watches ABC news about fireman rescuing cats.
Putin is moving into the Crimea. Well back in, of course his rellies were kicked out in The Crimean War.
You’ll will remember that of course, especially those of you familiar with Tennyson’s Charge of The Light Brigade. Remember when I visited Tennyson’s home and draped a PIGSARMS TEE shirt around the shingle .
The kindly editor here posted it in article (then). it might have disappeared by now I suppose.
Anyways keep up the happiness regime.
I listened to S.M : Shaun Micallef, on the radio today. He’s not only funny, he’s very bright too.
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Jayell said:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
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Jayell said:
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
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Jayell said:
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
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sandshoe said:
GO posted it kindly for you, Jayall, if this is the post you mean.
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Jayell said:
Goodness me, you found it. Sans comments: moderated out one supposes.
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Voice said:
I recall making a not very witty comment about the statue and the tee. Oh well.
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Jayell said:
Yes, I think that the gremlin moderators got in and polluted.
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sandshoe said:
A very long time ago there was a discussion that I recall about some problem that befell a number of posts.
If you want to find where your posts are Jayall, you go to the column on the RHS of the page where you have a folder with posts in it. Under the heading ‘Rooms at The Pig’s Arms’.
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sandshoe said:
I am catching a bus to travel in a few hours. Off to bed I go so I can make the journey.
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Jayell said:
Here’s what I’m watching. it certainly will take some of the paltry bitterness, negativity and small mindedness out of your spleens. SBS: fallowed by Stephen Hawkins. Now HE should have something to bitch about, but like a lot of us – he’s too fuvken busy.
On SBS now, beautiful.
“A team of French researchers go in search of the lost city of Atlantis and explore its links to the Minoan civilisation, which disappeared around 3500 years ago.
Long synopsis: A team of French researchers go in search of the lost city of Atlantis and explore its links to the Minoan civilisation which disappeared around 3500 years ago. Scientists have uncovered evidence that the island of Crete, home of the Minoans, was hit by a massive tsunami around this time. Experts draw parallels between the Asian tsunami of 2004 with the wreckage left behind by the wave, which may have destroyed the Minoan society. CGI special effects are also used to render the impact this tsunami would have had on the ancient civilisation.
Where’s a tsunami when you need one? A depth charge in Lake Burley Griffin may suffice.
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Jayell said:
Of course, one of ato’s mates stated it: Plato. It is a fictional island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in c. 360 BC.
There’s a French dude on the programme, who’s taken 25 years studying Plato and translating it. he looked as if he had never been out of the library.
Poor old Reza Berati, bludgeoned to death it seems in the Kevin’s Kamp.
He was studying to be an architect, so his cousin says. he came to try and get in to Australia as he was told that it was Eldorado. Got a whack in the head instead. His cousin said that he knew you could (possibly) stay in Kamps for 10 years, however it was worth the wait????
What on earth was he thinking he could have gone in to Turkey and designed a flat roofed mosque or something.
The world is a peculiar place when people are prepared to spend their relatives money travelling 8000ks, stay in an ALP Kamp for 10 years, just to became an Australian Architect, instead of a Persian Planner.
Mind you people have patience ———- look at The Pyramids and The Great Wall of China.
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gerard oosterman said:
What a miserable man you are Jayell. This poor man was murdered inside the Manus Island prison. I wish Emmjay would piss you off.
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Jayell said:
You really are thick. Of course everyone is upset about any death. Whether it is a child , an old lady or a young man.
But you never protested about the other 1100 that died under a government that you supported. What’s your explanation?
my comment is to show you what happen to a young man who did something that he shouldn’t have.
I think that your double glazing is over your s brain and your eyes.
My comment has nothing to do with liking death.
Try an explain yourself – -if you can?
Without insults.
Go on, go for it. (I know you can’t)
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Jayell said:
What Emjjay, should do, is up to him. An IQ curfew maybe?
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helvityni said:
Who told Abbott and Morrison that they can’t process the asylum seekers on the mainland?
Was it the God?
Kevin’s gone, and Labor is in the opposition now: they are Abbott’s responsibility now,
Reza died under Morrison’s care.
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Jayell said:
That’s sounds stupid.
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Jayell said:
Who told Abbott and Morrison that they can’t process the asylum seekers on the mainland?
Bill Shorten!
Even when questioned directly, Bill Shorten seems unable to provide a definitive opinion. In an ABC interview on February 7th, he says, “In terms of the asylum seekers, our position is, what is the government doing? … we would just like them to tell us what they’re doing.”
Do some research you two. I’ve told you this before. You look follish wehen your contradicting your leader.
And for the record, I and my whole family, abhor the Kamps. The quicker they are fucking well closed the better. It cannot come soon enough*.
Under The ALP, it would be doubling in size now instead of diminishing.
How is it you cant’ see that?
* Just to r”epeat” that, because I feel that I need to …IT (the closure) CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH! Did you understand that?
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vivienne29 said:
Jules, you have a strange way of ultimately expressing sympathy. Your comments remain pretty nasty and yet you wonder why some of us get pissed off with you.
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vivienne29 said:
And, Jules, for a fun loving guy why didn’t you join in the fun on my latest offering – not a peep.
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Jayell said:
” Your comments remain pretty nasty and yet you wonder why some of us get pissed off with you.”
Don’t you find ,’some’ so nebulous and bankrupt.
Examples please?
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cartoonmick said:
The Labor Governments boat plan was bad, as is the Coalitions boat plan.
I don’t know what the answer is.
Maybe the good guys should knock out the bad guys who make life hard in those countries where the asylum seekers come from. Dunno.
There have been many cartoons about boats and the governments secret actions, this is just another one.
Cheers
Mick
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sandshoe said:
I admit a wry appreciation of your cartoon regarding the dramatic upturn of the economy immediately following the export to North Korea of Australia’s politicians.
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cartoonmick said:
Thanks Sandshoe, but a sad fact of life is that NK would probably reject them.
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sandshoe said:
Yes, sadly we would have to call out the Navy to look after that. Orders.
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gerard oosterman said:
I have become a hopeless disciple of double glazing. For days now I look at nothing but web-sites on that subject, even sinking as low as watching videos. One video has a lady extolling the benefits of double glazing. It is one of those you-tube things, home made and unedited. You can tell she had her hair specially done and mum must have done her make-up. Her voice isn’t synchronised with the movement of her lips either. I have watched this video several times in absolute fascination. She ends up saying her life has become so much more ‘comfortable’ and shows this by shutting a panel of double glazing. She smiles a beatific smile worthy of a mother Theresa. I am sure she will go to a heaven full of double glazed panels.
You might think watching a video on double glazing a sure sign Gerard has tipped over the edge. You are not far wrong. I have tried the rest, but it lets in so much noise. Watching the world in the single panel mode is now akin to living in a charnel house. Not a day goes by and another slaughter fronts us on the TV. The 29 or so private school students slaughtered in Uganda. How can this happen? The warring sides in Syria, children’s corpses tossed aside. “This footage might disturb some viewers”, the newsreaders keep saying.
Even the weather report is fraught with calamities of an heretofore unknown scale. People are perched on roof-tops in the UK, others are snowbound in their cars with mobiles and tablets the only thing that keeps them alive and in touch with their survivors. In Australia the drought is getting its grip back again. Dry water holes are the order of the day together with sheep and cow carcasses. I sometimes wonder if journalists have their car-boots packed with sheep carcasses, plastic flowers and teddy bears to add photographic poignancy to their stories?
The real disadvantage of viewing the world through single glazing locally is how Australia treats its refugees. The spectacle of who should apologize to whom over the lack of information coming from our government while a refugee got murdered whilst supposedly under our care. “We mustn’t let the ‘floodgates’ open.”
I would have thought the 700.000 refugees fleeing into Turkey and another 700.000 into Jordan are floodgates. You would think a politician got killed instead of a refugee on Manus Island. It is all so bloody awful. Who would have thought a retirement could be so brutally hampered by almost anything going on in public. Where are the good stories? Even our winter Olympics have been a limp affair. It’s no wonder people turn to double glazing.
We have meekly assuaged our conscience by a monthly donation to Médecins sans Frontières. It’s about the only thing we can do against the overwhelming plights of so many millions. I perhaps subconsciously hunker after a kind of double glazing of life excluding all that misery.
For those that can afford and want to do something, here is the donating web-site of Médecins sans Frontières
http://www.msf.org.au/donate/?utm_source=MSF&utm_medium=email&utm_content=donate&utm_campaign=enewsletter
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Gez, I know exactly what you mean.
I have been doing a lot of Mindfullness meditation of late, and I have made a decision to not watch the NEWS on TV any more. I’m one of the viewers who do find those images disturbing. Especially the ones perpetrated under the auspices of a government I didn’t vote for and never fuckin’ will. These people are below contempt and just behind them in the contemptuous line are our former old mates of the so-called left (yeah, left with no ideology beyond grasping and retaining power at any cost).
First abandoned the Drum, then QandA, then 7;30 report, then the ABC News, then SBS News, then ABC radio (except Classic FM), then the Fairfax Herald (stopped reading the Australian in mid 1970s – guess why).
I am starting to not worry that I will have no offing idea what’s going on. I can work it out when I laugh with Shaun Micallef.
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vivienne29 said:
Oh, well there is a new Doctor Who to look forward to ! 🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes Emm, it has to come to that. No news on TV anymore. I put the button on mute till the weather forecast. Even that is now in question. Micallef is about the one thing we still watch together with a serial such as Poirot (if it is not too complicated) or that brilliant little French sketch with insects crawling about. Is it called IKON? Even Milo watches that one.
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algernon1 said:
Minuscule its what its called gerard. Probably my favourite 10 minutes worth.
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vivienne29 said:
Poirot – c’est fini – kaput – dead – killed off. Dreadful last episode.
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sandshoe said:
I reckon, Viv. Terrible.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Me too. I fell asleep on the couch, woke up and it was still going. So I turned it off and toddled off to bed. It was all over the shop and boring boring. I did manage to record Tim Winton’s 17 director magnum opus – The Turning the other night. I’ve watched three of them so far. Much more compelling viewing!
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sandshoe said:
I really appreciate reading your comment, Gez and Therese Trouserzoff’s. Vivienne, my little boy’s legs running barely touched the ground when the Dr Who music came on and he ran away. You will see this flustered child. Terrified he was, little man, Amazing a composer could have such power, eh. So much to say I’m sorry for to my children. No-one understands a child as a mother can do.
Gez, I feel the same about your essays. Not that I think of you as my mother. However, I do think of you as an essential, someone whose place in my personal society I see is empty when you are not around. Double glazing!! Having knowledge of it only through the stories of a friend who sold double glazing in the UK for a period when he married an English lass, your imagery in this comment places my nose on the very glass you intend your heedful and respectful reader to see through. I have to pay attention and think through your meaning to understand it. I love this imagery. I so appreciate you, Gez. Thank you.
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Big M said:
Gez, et al, I’m fascinated by double glazing, as well as some of the new sound and heat reduction glasses. Great for houses. I’m with you in terms of ‘mental double glazing’, ignoring the news (except when Mrs M has it on and I yell at the f$%^ing bastards), and going into the study to listen to on line lectures on astrobiology, exoplanets, epidemics, anything to shut out the mental ‘noise’!
I do look forward to Capaldi as Dr Who, having just watched some William Hartnell from 1965!
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gerard oosterman said:
Big M;
Yes, there is a lot in glass. My daughter lived in one of those apartments at Wolli Creek. The outside noise was terrible… till one shut the glass doors after which it was whisper quiet. It was some acoustic glass. I suppose similar to that at the airport terminal. One can see planes landing and taking off a hundred metres away and yet hear nothing.
We are thinking installing double glazing not for noise but keep in heat. Any ideas?
As for double glazing keeping out violence, I think Emm shows the way. Shut out all news and listen to plenty of Algernon’s music with a good dose of your wit and that of Hung one on and on..
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vivienne29 said:
Shoe – do you like Doc Who? I love the music – headphones on make it even better.
I wish I knew about double glazing when I built our house. It would have been so good to have.
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, head phones are a good invention. I have a pair of those and all I hear is just the music or the dialogue. Very handy if one is deaf but not so good for visual impairment.
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vivienne29 said:
Very good Gerard for people like me who love the music LOUD. We have two tvs to accommodate different tastes.
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sandshoe said:
Headphones are wonderful and the luxurious and comfortable the better. A Sony 200buck or so pair would suit me fine. I don’t watch Dr Who, Vivienne and think I would have to start at the beginning if that is possible to know what everybody is referring to who have been watching it for years. I feel it is hopeless.
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gerard oosterman said:
If it makes you feel good I would have been happy to have been your mother. You wrote a lovely post and I am moved by your kindness. The double glazing allegory came to me when getting information about real double glazing. With all the things going on in the world I wonder if a double glazing should be put into place in front of our brain filtering out all images of cruelty and only allow through wisps of clouds and angel songs.
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sandshoe said:
My Mum! Wow, Gez, a sort of adoption at the farm really and we are even from different countries how cute the photos will look of us, what do they call those animal friends, interspecies. But I think it suits piglet mums and their adopted babies from different parts of the planet as equally as elephants and kittens, zebras and tortoises. Now there’s a funny word, I would say and you would say, No matter about that just at the very minute, I have some lovely Dutch home made cookies and a great big mug of Trotters for you, come and have it and turn off the television, please. How remarkable. 🙂 XXOO LOL
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gerard oosterman said:
My post to you Shoe went and dived somewhere down below.
If it makes you feel good I would have been happy to have been your mother. You wrote a lovely post and I am moved by your kindness. The double glazing allegory came to me when getting information about real double glazing. With all the things going on in the world I wonder if a double glazing should be put into place in front of our brain filtering out all images of cruelty and only allow through wisps of clouds and angel songs.
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sandshoe said:
The Saturday Paper looks brilliant. I will love watching this project. Regardless envious having collaborated with some others to design a national paper and a launch plan. The key member of our directorate turned out was an illegal unbeknownst jeeeez just to think about it, guffaw or chuckle as you might. So I come from reading Malcolm Turnbull’s launch speech* – a little bit cream puffy – and bit classiclally IMHO off the rails suggesting alone ‘It is too early to assume that digital revenue will step into the breach in the ongoing fall in print advertising revenues ‘.
Anyway so be that. Greater minds than mine have looked at digital revenue and just because I never feel confident that Malcolm has applied himself to the issues of online use and ‘who goes there’ is no reason for me to feel mistrustful Malcolm can be thought a last word on anything digital. Don’t anybody think that, really I think, whatever polly persuasion is addictive at your breakfast table.
‘Australia’s boat people crisis’ by Richard Flanagan after subscribing $19.95 for a three month starter was my next choice and utter delight. My brain is challenged, confronted to think. Wish I was there. Good on you, Emmjay for putting up the support for the launch as headline at the Pig’s Arms.
Many thanks to you for this vid.
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sandshoe said:
necessarily… 😉
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vivienne29 said:
Thinking about subscribing on-line too Shoe.
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sandshoe said:
Hope you got in today, Viv, before you turned the machine off for the evening..
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vivienne29 said:
I subscribed this morning. I’m all sorted. Flanagan’s piece was great – got a lot of comments too. I first wanted to be sure that both computers at home could log in with the one subscription. No problems. I signed up for 12 months as encouragement. Better deal anyway.
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sandshoe said:
Excellent. We have contributed our voice. Good to know that you can access it anywhere. As you must. It is excellent i could get a short-term subscription. So many of those deals claiming it will cost you x amounts for 3 months trooly rooly mean that after you have pair up for ten years, three months will be valued at … LOL. GROAN. Subscriptioning in there was delightfully easy without time wasting. 🙂
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vivienne29 said:
Strange. My recording of the show does not have this clip piece in it. Also noted that the date says 28 Feb. The show was on Wednesday night. Where did you get this from?
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vivienne29 said:
Ah, it’s actually from early in February. Still don’t know how I missed it – might have been night family here for dinner and we talked through the whole thing.
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vivienne29 said:
It was year ago you dill.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Hi Viv – youtube. There are lots there. I didn’t recall it on TV either – maybe they also post the out-takes on youtube. Enjoy the lot. I lost two hours this morning – for no reason I can recall 🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
By the way ‘the Saturday Paper’ is brilliant. The tide has turned against the Morrisons of this Australia. I feel unusually optimistic this morning. Perhaps it is the rain.
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Voice said:
This kind of casual racism is gobsmacking. Years (decades) ago I went out with the son of a post-war Croatian immigrant. He occasionally moaned about his father and father’s mates at the Croatian Club sitting around moaning about Anglos and various other suspect nationalities from the usual Euro rivalries. He was studying Chinese and spoke Mandarin and was really into aspects of Chinese culture – I didn’t realise how extraordinary that was at the time. Anyway – it mostly wears off in a couple of generations.
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helvityni said:
The racism is well alive in the Morrison country, I hear this daily from my less educated Liberal acquaintances, the ones I regard as friends are ashamed of Abbott& Morrison’s politics…
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vivienne29 said:
Well I was still saving up my recording of this to watch tonight. But of course I had to click on this vid clip. Brilliant isn’t it. Odious cretin is still too kind. I had missed that #$%..xxxx&rd using those words. I truly am gobsmacked.
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gerard oosterman said:
Abetz at his abyss. Geez, if ever a migrant boy went the wrong way it would have to be him. Talk about assimilation!
Of course, thank god for Micallef, he is a genius.
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algernon1 said:
I’m somewhat surprised that someone from a family that had links to the Nazi Gestapo and had an uncle tried and convicted of war crimes, would ever be allowed to emigrate here.
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Voice said:
You can’t be serious. How many Germans who emigrated here after WWII wouldn’t have had a relative who was a Nazi? It was his great uncle BTW who was convicted of war crimes.
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algernon1 said:
Yes I can voice, If he were from say a Southern European family or Spanish with connections to the fascists then they would have been refused the right to emigrate at the time that the family emigrated.
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Voice said:
Who would have been denied the right to emigrate? The fascists or their relatives? If their relatives, how far would it have extended? Children? Nephews?
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algernon1 said:
Uncle Otto, was the Vishy French ambassador, and a confident of Hitler and von Rippentrop, He was no ordinary Nazi. A wide reaching banning here would have been appropriate.
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Voice said:
Eric’s father was Otto’s nephew. They banned immigration of adult nephews of Nazis? Not as far as I know. It doesn’t sound likely, given as I said, the number of Germans who would have had Nazi relatives. Were adult nephews of ANY Nazis stopped from immigrating for that fact alone? Hitler’s nephew went to the USA; just before the war though.
Abetz’ racism sounds to me more like common or garden Euro racism than Nazi influence. The kind that’s led to the rise of extreme right wing political parties throughout Europe today. Obviously Nazi racism didn’t appear out of a void, it was just a particularly sickening and extreme form.
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vivienne29 said:
Who would be denied right to emigrate. I had this ‘conversation’ with a disbelieving Lib on the Drum when I told him about the language testing being used to keep out undesirables and people not quite of the right colour. A native speaker of say Italian was given the test in Russian. The language test could be misused this way – it wasn’t illegal to do that. Our immigration people in various countries did that famously. No immediate reference to it on the web. But I do recall it received a few good and lengthy discussions on some news or current affairs or docos I saw way back. This is answering your whole question Voice but there were ways and means.
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Voice said:
You’re right Viv – it doesn’t answer all of my question. Or in fact any part of it.
But I recall my father telling me about those language tests.
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vivienne29 said:
Glad you realised the is was meant to be an isn’t. I think it might in part because no one knows what they got up to and what directions migration officers may or may not have received.
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gerard oosterman said:
Here is an in depth serious study of the dark side of racism in Australia.
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CFUQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.qut.edu.au%2F3878%2F1%2F3878_1.pdf&ei=KWMRU42jNonckgX_3oHgCQ&usg=AFQjCNFY6HqcvpevciLIT3wh-rOWuyS7ZQ
Schweitzer, Robert and Perkoulidis, Shelley A. and Krome, Sandra L. and Ludlow, Christopher N. (2005) Attitudes towards Refugees: The Dark Side of Prejudice in Australia . Australian Journal of Psychology 57(3):pp. 170-179.
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Voice said:
How sad to put up that link. You could have substituted just about any country name for Australia and come up with a similar article. But what is the point?
Is it about attitudes from one lot of refugees to the others, or from native-born Australians? Or did you just read the title? Crikey, the soccer wars in Sydney.
There are people who emigrated here in the 1950s who STILL make racist statements about Anglos, feeling justified by ill-treatment 50 years ago, and make casual racist statements deriving from hyper-awareness of nationality practically every day of the week. Some of the saddest are those who actually believed their parents about how the bad treatment they got was because Australians are particularly racist, and are now flailing about miserably and totally incapable of processing the facts about how their parents’ compatriots have treated refugees in their turn.
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vivienne29 said:
It is a valuable study. Thanks Gerard. For me the relevance is the problems that some people continue to have with certain migrants has been around a long time. Britain came to it more recently when they had to open their door to their Empire countries and then even more recently with the Europeans because of economic alliance. However, just because many countries have their own racial ‘problems’ should not mean we don’t examine our own. Fortunately in Australia most older cohorts of migrants and their ‘problems’ seem to evaporate and get replaced with new cohorts. I have never met any older migrants or their children complain about their treatment other than regular mentions of our bland and boring food at the time in places like Bonegilla. All of Bonegilla Migrant hostels info is now part of a museum and just this week many migrants who first landed in Australia went back to Bonegilla for reunions. I do personally know (friends) who started Aussie life at Bonegilla – two of them helped me build my house.
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algernon1 said:
Oh voice get off your high horse, I have a southern European name, yet my family has been here since the 1840’s (at least). I endured racism on a daily basis growing up, I was persecuted at school, I had a Jewish teacher who went mad through her hatred, all because of a name. (What I experienced was nothing compared to my father).You know where most of it came from, nearly exclusively from 10 pound poms. I literally grew up hating my name, being called wog day in day out. I had one pom at high school who couldn’t even talk to you without wog wog wog. One day I said to him you know George there’s one thing I’ll be that you’ll never be and that’s Australian. A week later he left the school. It was only after school that I learnt to embrace my name, unfortunately I lost a lot though.
Best if you keep your faux racism to yourself.
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Voice said:
Yep, you’d have to include a lot of those 10 pound poms in the category of racist immigrants. Not all, obviously. That would be racist. Also incorrect.
As I said earlier, it mostly grows out in a couple of generations.
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sandshoe said:
I am a first generation Australian on my father’s side and second on my mother’s. My prejudice colours my perceptions and I want my prejudice uncoloured by understanding it inclusive discussion about it. I think like so. My prejudice is I was raised to understand my Scottishness is not ‘Anglo’. My relationship to Australia is I am a migrant’s child and migrants’ grandchild. When I was a child I was taunted by packs of children taking the mickey out of the way I enunciated and my looks (get your mother to paint your lips with lipstick didja didja …and I will leave out the name of the racial characteristic my full mouth was supposed to represent followed by the chanted word ‘lips’)…that has affected me badly…these kids were little Anglos and certainly weren’t the children of the European migrants I was raised to speak well of, as I was to speak of any group anyway.
I didn’t need much incentive other than raw experience to understand behind the uncompromising diplomacy I was taught was a matter of necessity and a war that began it. Quite a number of wars I was to learn about as more consequences in a multi-racial society, repeated generation after generation, came to my attention at that local level. I co-exist with ‘Anglos’ in warm and productive relationships. I am not one. An ‘Anglo’ I mean. I can live with that. Being silenced I cannot live with on behalf of anyone else’s misplaced sensitivities about their race or any other person’s anymore than I can tolerate an indigenous Australian person’s grief or experience being silenced with regard to some other persons’ racial sensitivities. Racism is deliberate perpetration of harm or personal slight directed at individuals or groups without rational intent or origin. That is absolutely different from anything I describe in the foregoing.
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vivienne29 said:
All my lines go back to everyone arriving in Australia around 1850. Not an exotic race amongst the lot. Scots, Cornish, English origins.
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algernon1 said:
On mums side it’s Cornish,Irish, English, So I share something in common with Albo and the new Dr Who.
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Venise Alstergren said:
Does anyone here know if that double Dutchman Eric Abetz has a sense of humour? Can he smile? Is he human? Intelligent? Is he alive?
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gerard oosterman said:
He is actually double German. He loves his Heisze wurste mit saur Kraut und apfel Gemusze. No herrings for him.
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Venise Alstergren said:
Gerard: Thanks for your reply. I knew, or thought I did, Abetz to be German but I came across a scrawled note from myself-work that out-to the effect his religion is Dutch Reformed Church.
Heigh ho, born to be confused, moi!
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helvityni said:
Shaun, I don’t care how your parents came here, I’m glad they did….maybe we can send Abetz back where he came from, let the receiver pay for his fares….
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Six months in a leaky boat is too good for him, Helvi.
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