Tag Archives: Rudd

The Sounds of Sirens – The Final Conclusion

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

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Conclusion to Lehan Winifred Ramsay’s mini-series

IT’S HERE. BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND. THE STORY THAT THE OTHER MAINSTREAM MEDIA REFUSED TO RUN

Two men stand on the dais before the Great Walk On The Water. It is The Course of History and Only One Man can Survive. There is Mister A Boat. And there is Mister Rudder.

Neither of them of course prepared to admit that the most vehement, the most emphatic subject of their campaign was based entirely on the boatiness of their names and how that was going to resonate to the public. Even Mister Rupert Murdoch has not been shameless enough to invoke the name of the McCales Navy in this fight-to-the-death, preferring a more nuanced referencing of Hogan’s Heroes. This is probably because he can edge in not only a reference to women but also the ongoing social controversy in America concerning weapons and therefore get the conversation round to John Howard again.

This is The Walk On Water and it should not even be attempted by someone who is not prepared to swear that they will in their determination to become the Leader of This Great Country of Ours try absolutely anything. Things that ordinarily you would be put into a mental hospital for, things that ordinarily might be considered not cricket. Mister A Boat is prepared to say that he would consider anal sex, that’s pretty shocking and it is not going to be topped by Mister Rudder and that is probably why he is going to fall through that great Partisan Platform out there. We all know that, apparently, even though the contest has not yet begun. Anyone who doesn’t know that is really dumb.

There are other rituals for the attaining of manhood and Leadership of course but since that nasty incident last year with the Walking Barefoot On Coals at one of those Tony Robbins events nobody is even going to suggest them. So that’s enough of a lead-in here, our two candidates are at the waters shore now and they have taken off their shiny black shoes being careful to untie the laces first and peeled off their breathable socks cuts down on athletes foot and they have taken their first steps and YES! It DOES! It DOES look like they can walk on water! In fact they ARE, they ARE walking on water it is a small miracle here today folks but a big one for Christianity which is being redeemed as we watch. Oh god, the humanity.

A bold step each of them takes out onto the water and another and another both looking very confident and somehow bigger and more emphatic with each step. But oh Mister Rudder has just dropped below the surface of the water some of the security are just donning life jackets and reading health and safety regulations they will be out there in just a moment. But oh wait there is a kind of choir that has popped up there they are singing. Everything’s all right now everything’s fine. And it’s cool and the ointments sweet for the fire in your head and feet and I think this was meant to be an interlude it is clear that Mister Crow has really done a lovely job with the local volunteers and this could be a bit of a highlight. We are just segueing smoothly into Les Miserables now. Mister Rudd has been pulled in by a pole with a robotic looking arm there.

Mister A Boat, he is still walking. He is just walking and walking, across the water, and from here his hair it seems to be growing, almost leonine, the hair dye seems to be fading, from here he appears almost hawkish, it is quite remarkable. I understand that it looked good to start them both off at the Parliament House but Mister A Boat is just getting further and further away, who knows where it is going to end today. People have started blowing whistles now, trying to get his attention there is talk of ordering in some of those things from the South African World Soccer Cup vuvulesas perhaps but he seems distracted by something, he is looking a little up into the sky, he seems to be seeing something there, something up there, in the sky. Anyway that’s how it happened here today.

Unworthy, Unworthy, Unworthy

09 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Emmjay, Politics in the Pig's Arms

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ferretabiliaStory by Emmjay

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, I was fond of reading the weekly newspaper The Nation Review.  There were many top shelf contributors including luminaries of the times like Germaine Greer, Phillip Adams, John Hepworth, Morris Lurie, Bob Ellis and the redoubtable cartoonists of the day, Michael Leunig and Patrick Cook.  Richard Walsh wrote a paperback coffee table book about the Nation Review and charted its course through to its demise in 1983 (thanks Wikipedia).  Walsh’s book was called “Ferretabilia” – maybe a copy or two left at Leura Books – because Nation Review as Wiki says “styled itself as ‘Lean and Nosey – like a ferret’

mungoI always enjoyed Mungo MacCallum’s pieces and I was reminded of this in today’s book purchase at random – from Berkelouw’s in Newtown – called “Punch and Judy” – referring  (too kindly in my view) to the state of the recent and current political canvas.

punch-judyIn this book, Mungo shows us that he’s lost none of his sharp, perceptive and dry wit since those Nation Review days.  He borrows the definition of “Punch and Judy” from Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (“a deception, an unbelievable story”) and dedicates the book to his old friend Graham Freudenberg (Gough Whitlam’s speech writer), referring to the old days when politics was “important, passionate and fun”.

And it occurred to me that he’s summed up nicely the current political malaise in just a handful of words -it certainly isn’t like the old days – politics nowadays have become trivial, deeply disrespectful, cynical and dire.

Richard Walsh said that the Nation Review folded because the readership had moved on and that many people amongst the paper’s left-leaning readership had become – by 1983 – disenchanted with politics – not least because of an abiding sense of unassuaged outrage at the Dismissal, but also because of the ridiculous caravan of buffoons the Labor party had foisted on the Australian citizenry, the decent bloke but unelectable leadership of Bill Hayden (who was as charismatic as his batting counterpart in cricket – Bill Lawry, otherwise referred to as ‘ a corpse with pads’) and the apparent contentment voters seemed to feel under Malcolm Fraser’s prime minister-ship.  Until Bob Hawke broke the national political slumber party and set the Labor record by winning four elections on the trot.

That may have been true, but I recall the 1980s as a decade of working my bum off, making a quid, buying a house and raising a pair of baby Emmlets.  I let my membership of the Labor party lapse because other, more personal things intervened.  I left – as they say – “for family reasons”.

Meanwhile in another universe, John Hewson, like Tony Abbott more recently, managed to lose the unlosable election – to the much disliked, but enormously talented and consummate politician, Paul Keating (whose Dad, incidentally played bowls with my Dad on the odd occasion).

Tony Abbott, similarly lost the unlosable election to the much disliked Julia Gillard – who proved to be not so much ‘consummate’ as she was ‘consumed’. Although nobody can take away from her triumph – the NDIS – or the poisoned chalice of being Australia’s first female prime minister.

Mungo MacCallum’s book is about the 2010 election, but so much of his picture remains as fresh as the day he painted it.  The political landscape seems to have changed so little, notwithstanding the last election result being the first minority government since World War II.

Both parties struggle to be more popular under their respective leaders, abandoning the fundamental principles that should be their raison d’etre.  How can voters of conservative or progressive persuasions deal with the unashamed bastardry of the asylum seeker issue, the poll-driven gutlessness or straight out incompetence of the mining super tax, the on and off and on carbon tax (which surely has to be one of the daftest responses to the seemingly deniable climate change disaster) ?

Is it any wonder under the current major parties and their dropkick leaders that we are facing an impossible choice – a brown turd government or a black turd government ?  Is it any wonder that the outcome is more likely to be determined by redneck idiots believing a massively lethal and self-interested, even evil media ?  Is it any wonder than the youth vote – that could have the power to turn this election into something that might arouse some passion and idealistic fervour – could not give a tinker’s cuss ?

I have to admit that I felt – and still feel that John Howard was a disgrace to his high office – and that a man who, riding on the coat tails of such an unworthy dill as George W Bush, took Australia into not one, but two completely unjustifiable bloody and disastrous conflicts.  And I was proud that Australians told Howard and his cronies how lowly we regarded them, when they tossed him out of his own electorate and the Libnats out of government.

We didn’t throw him out for this reason.  We threw him out mainly because of his shitty, demonstrably unfair and un-Australian industrial relations policies – rightly hammered in a wonderfully effective campaign run by the unions – before the same unions’ leaders went on to show an undisguised propensity to spend their member’s union dues in brothels.

Instead of the Rodent, we went on blind trust with a dork who magically appeared out of the Queensland wilderness and turned into some kind of administrative mandarin-speaking autocratic brown nose.

But perhaps the most telling observation offered by Mungo MacCallum was the poisonous internal shitfighting of both the major parties.  The NSW Labor corruption managed to eclipse the incompetence of the far right Labor in NSW and Queensland that, thanks to the media, well and truly (and perhaps rightly so) overshadowed the recriminations within the Liberals – Abbott turning on the NSW Liberal far right religious power-broker David Clark who Abbott saw as stacking the NSW party with dud candidates and thereby ensuring the loss of the unlosable election.  If this is not a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, I’ll be damned.

And let’s not forget the Abbot – Turnbull leadership debacle, which, had the one vote majority gone to Turnbull instead of Abbott, could have seen the biggest landslide in Australian political history instead of this tensely poised struggle between two idealistically barren drop kicks.

This time the choice for voters is different. Through both the main parties’ barren policies and their cynical power-hungry amoral machinations, they have set in stone the abject poverty of the two-party system.  They have shown us that both the Labor and the Liberal parties  have become corrupt and despicable beyond belief.

This time Australia really needs to throw out not only the Government – but also the Opposition.  And unless we let the two main parties go, a double double dissolution is impossible to achieve.

I have said in a previous article (OK, I admit that it was clichéd) that Australians will get the government we deserve, regardless of the outcome.  If our elections continue to be won by manipulating the media, by convincing rednecks and bogan half-wits with no moral compass to vote (even against their own personal interests) for policies (like boat arrivals) that are unimportant in the bigger scheme of things, and ignore issues that DO matter – like climate change, education, employment and the environment, the world will see another prime example of the ugly side of western democracy – government of the unworthy, for the unworthy, by the unworthy.

Julia Gillard . Wonder woman

29 Saturday Jun 2013

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untitled

Julia Gillard ousted: Achievement does not equal respect if you’re a woman

Julia Gillard navigated through the financial crisis, presided over a 14 per cent growth in the economy and pushed through several impressive policy reforms. The problem for the Australian PM was not her performance. It was that, from to beginning to end, she remained female, says Australian writer Van Badham

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10143834/Julia-Gillard-ousted-by-sexism-

Achievement-does-not-equal-respect-if-youre-a-woman.html

The reality is far different. After her rolling of Rudd, Gillard nudged to power in minority government after a disastrous election result for both Australia’s major parties in 2010. It was Gillard, not her opponent, the conservative Tony Abbott, who managed to win the support of what looked like an impossible coalition of four crossbenchers – a Green, and independent progressive and two independent conservatives.

Despite a minority government, her leadership and willingness to negotiate led to her passing a record amount of legislation for a post-war Australian Prime Minister.

This included:

  • Australia’s first National Disability Insurance Scheme, of direct benefit to the 500,000 Australians living with disability
  • Introduction of carbon pricing and an Emissions Trading Scheme which has reduced carbon emissions in Australia      between 8-11 percent
  • Overseeing the Gonski review for the revolutionary overhaul of the entire primary and secondary education sector
  • Seeing that Australia take up a seat on the UN security for the first time
  • Instituted life-changing policies for improvements in indigenous literacy
  • Overseeing a national broadband network of high-speed internet is nation-building infrastructure.

Economically, her government maintained a commitment to Keynesian policy, unswayed by popular Ayatollahs of faulty spreadsheet economics that have impoverished other developed nations. Australia was the only developed economy to survive the global financial crisis, and under Gillard’s leadership the economy grew by 14pc.

It must beggar belief in other developed nations to see a leader who has delivered low unemployment, low interest rates, low inflation, three triple-A credit ratings and the third-lowest rate of debt in the OECD shafted so brutally.

 

What Have We Done to Deserve This ?

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Emmjay

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Tony Abbott wears a rainbow hair net as part of an organ donation campaign.

Story by Emmjay

As we rocket towards the next election, the one certainty, IMHO, is that Australia will inevitably get the government we deserve.

In 2007, the Ruddslide disposed of a much despised sitting Prime Minister and his party.  Australia had clearly grown very tired of a very tired, mean-spirited and uninspired government wedded to Thatcherite free-market principles.  My God !  The rodent had taken Australia to war in Iraq against massive public opinion and justified his decision with lies about non-existent weapons of mass destruction.  How bad did a government and a Prime Minister have to be before the electorate would throw the bastards out ?

Rudd’s little-disguised frustration and inability to push ahead with much change, beyond admittedly engineering a world-leading response to the global financial crisis – saw his inconceivable deposal by his deputy.  He has proven that he is not a team player – moreover he has stayed true to his real calling of being an administrator, not a politician.

Rudd’s removal left the Left supporters amongst the Centre-Left in a quandary – torn between the exciting possibilities of Australia’s first female Prime Minister and the obvious disrespect for Rudd’s achievement in beating Howard.  There were many weasel words in transparently unconvincing justifications about Rudd losing his party’s confidence, but Australia saw the reality – Labor had gone to jelly at the threat of hostile media-driven polls.

And against a backdrop of long-standing and deeply incompetent and corrupt State Labor governments, the Gillard government managed to hang on to power in the 2010 election with the help of elected independents.

None of this is news, of course, but the previous national election outcome and the widely-predicted one to come show a trend of escalating irrational anger amongst people who are so completely unwilling to think about politics and who are so easily manipulated by media ogres.  This atmosphere threatens to translate into the election of a government who is avowedly antipathetic towards the very interests of those who would traditionally have voted Labor.

Put another way, poorly-informed, lazy and witless voters, easily manipulated by a hostile media funded by cashed-up self-interested parties in mining, gambling and other environmental and social disasters are apparently happy to punish a government and a Prime Minister that they feel is bad.  When asked what is bad about the PM and the government, no coherent response is forthcoming.

And so we see the looming disaster of the possible election of a tory coalition that is not only antipathetic to the needs of everyone south of the upper middle class, a coalition that is indifferent to the exigencies of dealing with climate change, that seeks power for power’s sake, that is an arrant apologist for mega wealthy mining magnates with the social grace of pigs (apologies to real pigs), that is completely clueless about policy and who is led by a misogynist retard bully with all the grace, sophistication and style of a floating turd.

An apt description is John Howard Lite – mean and nasty but without the rat-like cunning.  A party of drop kicks led by a man who could learn a thing or two from a superior intellect – George W Bush – no mean feat.

But is Australia unique in our ability to contemplate disastrous political choices ?

I think not.  Witness the worrying rise of the extreme right in Europe – both in the Spano-Greek-Italian basket case economies and amongst the more solvent Franks and Huns.

More recently, last week in fact, saw the election of huge numbers of new local government members from the UKIP party who won about 25% of the votes in the seats that they contested across Britain.  Led by Nigel Farage (described by David Cameron as a loony – when Cameron was leader of the Opposition) a rag tag bunch of disparate people who are not in any sense organised beyond sharing a desire to be with white folk in a society remarkably like the 1950s, the UK Independent Party overnight become a major force in British politics.

For what do they stand ?  Answer: pulling Britain out of the EU and turning the taps off on immigration for the “next five years or so”.  How these policies make sense – especially at the level of a local council, I have to admit, is beyond me.

Cameron did a backflip from his new position of being in power and toned down the “loony” comment, recognising that his coalition was likely at some stage to have to engage and negotiate with these half-witted Hansonites in the very near future.

What is causing this madness ?  Why are people supporting far right arsehats – the kind that our parents fought wars against ?  I think it’s because as nations we are easily frightened and when we are frightened, we revert to type.  Australians, in the main are sheep too.

We are frightened by real and imaginary forces alike.  Like the UKIP, we are so willing to follow the first arsehole in red speedos who exhorts us to circle the wagons and break out the carbines.  And so what if a few of our own folk who have the misfortune of looking a little bit like red Indians get caught in the crossfire ?  It’s for the greater good.  One’s own tribe’s greater good.  A sacrifice worth making – so long as someone else is making it.

And it is a huge mistake to respond to far right political supporters by trying to placate them.  Chamberlain was proven badly wrong by history.  There was, and is now, no piece of paper guaranteeing peace in our time.

When Julia Gillard smacked Tony Abbott for his crass, moronic personal attacks and beat him so severely for his misogynous demeanour, it made the world media stand up and take notice.  That’s the appropriate way to treat a dog that refuses to behave – a rolled up newspaper across the snout.

But returning to the main concern, how is it that, in the face of one of the most important initiatives ever to be undertaken by any government – worldwide – and BTW, much better handled in the past by Britain than here – namely proper support for the disabled –how is it  that anyone would contemplate voting for not the party carrying the initiative, but the Opposition ?

It beggars belief why a population that overwhelmingly supports a far better deal for disabled people and their carers  – even to the extent of 60% of polled respondents accepting an increase in the Medicare Levy – would for a minute consider voting for another party that has to be brought kicking and screaming to the table every fucking time.  A party with no discernible policies beyond opposing everything.  A party with nothing positive to say, and no vision for the country beyond turning the clocks back Howard style.

Perhaps Clive Palmer and Bob Katter – who epitomise the loony far right could offer the country a way of avoiding the disaster of a Tony Abbott-led government by dumb perverse chance.  They might split the conservative vote and allow Labor a slim chance to survive; a chance to push forward with more real reform.

A chance to avoid accommodating the political wishes of morons whose sole objection to the PM is “I just don’t like her”.

I’m not a huge fan of Julia Gillard, but I do concede that she and the party have had to deal with some seriously difficult issues – from the position of a minority government, the powerful hostility of the mining and energy multinationals, a hostile media, corruption and outright incompetence in the broader Labor party and the global financial crisis, the rise of violent fundamentalists and the distractions of a deposed former leader who has justified his own removal by acting like a petulant schoolgirl ever since.

I want a tough and humane leader who admits and redresses mistakes like she does.  I don’t want some bozo on a bicycle wandering around in dayglo vests with hair nets and safety glasses, pretending that he’s a man of the people, struggling to keep his um feet out of um his um mouth.

Smells a bit Fishy

Smells a bit Fishy

An Australian George W Bush ?  Please NO !

When the Chips are Down – Wrap them Up

26 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Emmjay, Politics in the Pig's Arms

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I'm voting for you. You're Dead Meat.

The Pig’s Arms Boozecasting Corporation (PABC) psephologist and race-caller, Antony Puce – ever the man for an each way bet has been staying up all night sucking on his insider sauces.  Here’s his latest update on the Rudd / Gillard debacle / fisco / coup / sledging competition.

[[
I was mulling over the complex shitfight known as Australian politics last night.  Burning the midnight absinthe and Merv rolled up in the passenger seat of a chauffeured Turramurra starlifter.  He was sitting next to Giles – the best attired occupant of said vehicle.

On the back seat were a sartorially startling couple on their way back from the St Ives Golf Club Ball and Liberal Party fundraiser.  Merv had amazingly coaxed them this side of the big swamp (otherwise known as Sydney Harbour).  It was lucky Giles knew the way, because I’m certain they had never been out of the leafy northern suburbs since birth, except to streak to Kingsford Smith International airport – by way of transiting to Paris at the pointy end of an Airbus 380.  Possibly one of THEIR airbus 380s.

Rumour has it that the harbour tunnel was built so that they didn’t have to actually look at any of the dwellers on the south side on the way to overseas.

But Fern and Godfrey were not both halves of your average mega-wealthy couple.  As they took up comfortable seats in the Pig’s Arms ladies lounge, and quaffed the first of several bottles of Kurg (Merv would later have words with Manne over the little slip up with the label hastily stuck over the bottle that strongly reminded me of Porphyry Pearl), Godfrey let fly with some deeply inside information of the as he said “laughingly called” Labor shenanigans.  Quaff Quaff.

He said that according to Michael Crocker (at least I thought he said “Crocker”), Kevin Rudd has no expectations of winning the PMship.  It’s just a justification for reluctantly accepting his fate – the OK Corral Monday 10:00 – and opening the way for Rudd to have his shot at the main game – Secretary General of the UN, by way of first being the member for the backbench nearest to the unisex toilet and nappy-changing room.

Godfrey said that Crocker stepped it out for him – Julia wins the PM again – Rudd pledges full support for Julia – Crean sprays coffee out his nose, trying not to die laughing in front of the cameras.

Godfrey said that that last trip to Washington was to stitch up Hillary’s support for the Rudder to take over from Bunky Moon next year – just before the election.

Julia is supposed to lose in a Ruddslide.  Abbott cannot win, so he will need to run across the road in a triathlon and be mowed down by a paper truck owned by Fairfux who by then, will in turn be wholly-owned by Gina Rawhide.  Alternative theories suggest a return to that old conservative tactic – the Harold Holt man oeuvre board.

The replacement for Abbot will be problematic.  Turnbuckle is too wet for the miners, Jumpin’ Joe is just not bright enough, but is at least malleable – provided Christopher Pyne-o-clean does the thinking for him.  So the Turnbuckle / Pyne-o-clean team gets up.

The independents will be massacred and buried in unmarked shallow ballot boxes.

The Labor party will have an across the board spill.  Anthony Albuqueque – who has shown great courage and personal integrity by voting for Rudd – as a protest against Rudd getting shafted in a “not the Labor Party” way, without admitting that he also recognises that the massive disaffection with Rudd is based on the reality that Rudd was, is and always will be a micro-managing tosser who happened to run against the most hated Liberal since Bob Menzies played in the Bethlehem under sixes.

Julia refused to accept Albo’s resignation for fessing up that he’s not going to vote for her – possibly because without Albo, Labor does not have an attack dog in the front row – but more probably because he has the respect of many in caucus because he gives not a shit about anything else except punching out Tories.

On that basis, Julia has confirmed that she’s not tough enough to be PM – remembering that Australians prefer a PM that reminds them of their dad after he’s had a skinful and feels like fighting coppers.

So Albo will be our man – but not for ….. say …… ten years of total misery by which time….  prolonged mining in WA will cause Australia to overbalance and half slide off the East Coast continental shelf, pranging into New Zealand.

There will be a massive voter backlash due to proximity discomfort from Dame Kiri.  And Albo will be the man of the hour.  Clive Palmist, Twiggy Foreign and Gina Rhino will start mining the Pacific Ocean, Antarctica and Bill Grate’s bank account – figuring that it’s easier to just mine money and cut out all that dirt and noise – that requires (gasp) labour.

Rudd as UN chief will preside over the subjugation of the Arab states by the Chinese – brought about by a mistranslation of the mandarin for “we’ll have all of it” as “we laugh at awful tit”,

People will remember with fondness / deep anger Australia’s experiment with a hung parliament and a government led by our first shiela PM, but being Australians we will cop it sweet and stand by our man.

Our Man Albo.

I finished copying down Godfrey’s diatribe, Emailed it off to the editor (Voice – who will take out ALL the dashes and a goodly-proportion of the apostrophes) and toddled into the Ladies lounge for a share of what was left of the Porphyry Kurg.
]] (sic*)
*Editor’s note: The proof-reader is currently on emergency leave of absinthe.

It’s A Win for Doomocracy

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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Story by the PABC (Pig’s Arms Boozecasting Company) psephologist and race caller Antony Puce.

It was two in the afternoon when Antony Puce slouched into the Pig’s Arms and drew up a stool at the bar.  Merv could see that he had had a big night and it was no big deal guessing what was on his mind.

Merv tossed the ice into the shaker, added his magic pink liquors, capped the vessel and shook it like he meant it.  “Hold the little paper umbrella”  said Puce.  And Merv decanted the Pink into a cocktail glass fit for …. a bit of a cock.

“The main game?” said Merv, well-knowing that a leadership spill against a PM is likely to happen only once in a lifetime.  “Of course.” said Puce.

He adjusted his Anthony Squires bag of fruit pants to restore the blood flow to his wedding tackle, raised the Pink and downed it in a single smooth fluid flourish.  Without needing prompting, Merv reloaded the shaker, shook and charged a fresh glass, forgetting to leave out the paper umbrella.  Puce picked out the offending poolside miniature and flicked it in the general direction of away – as a smoker might discard a butt from a car window in bushfire season – and with the same amount of care.

“It’s like this:” Puce said and Merv adopted his old kung fu stance – the sleeping horse and readied himself for a distillation of Puce’s take on the spill.

This is a big spill.  It makes Exxon Valdiz look like catshit on the carpet.  I mean, when Gees minders gelded Rudd, they broke the unwritten code.

” What’s that ?” asked Merv. “Dunno” said Puce.  “It’s not written down”.  But Puce had a feeling in his waters and his water feelings rarely let him down.  I’d say that it doesn’t matter how big a deadshit the PM is, his or her party must back him or her until the electorate throw the bastard out.  The electorate decides when to change the lead horse.  The parties only pick the jockey.  So when The Gee team gelded Rudd, they were taking a big punt that came within a gnat’s whisker of not succeeding.  Still might not in the last furlong.

But to roll the dice on another scratching and a bloody resurrection is beyond wild irresponsibility with the crown jewels.  It’s fuckin’ suicidal, said Puce, who by now was feeling his oats and the warming effect of a Pink and a half was unmistakeable.

I’ve been down to the track.  I’d say it was hard.  The owners and trainers are taking up their positions in the Members’ Stand.  I’d say they could not care less who wins this one – or the minor placings.  These magnates are building their war chests and preparing for a big killing in the 2013 season.  The bookies in the ring are sending every fuckin’ mixed message they can think of to keep the punters unsteady on their feet.  Now just because Rudd’s handlers have scratched him today, does not mean he’s been put out to grass on the backbenches, much less sent off to the knackery.  He’s a definite starter for Monday’s steeple and despite indifferent form overseas, he can’t be ruled out – at least for a place.

“But the big filly has to have the shortest odds, surely, Puco” said Merv.

Maybe, but there’s a lot of activity amongst the handlers and there’s a strong chance that a dark horse might surprise everyone.  “Wot, like Christopher Pyne-o-clean ?”, joked Merv.

No.

Pink.  And make it snappy !

I’m sure there’s been a lot of preparation over at the Smith stable and there’s talk that the Palomino from Grayndler – or should I say Albermino, are capable runners.  But across the scales, I’d say they were stayers running just out of the placings.  Lightly handicapped for a good reason.

“I think it’s probably a mistake to put either horse in the jumps.” said Puce.  “Too many falls.  Too many serious injuries.”

“And too many deaths”, added Merv. “Ida thought that a pony that’s lost his nuts in a previous fall would be smart enough to not draw attention to that.  After all, it’s not much of a stud that touts a gelding as it’s big name draw card, is it ?”

The hangers-on and listeners-in in the bar murmured that they were keeping up and were keen to have some insight into the result in advance – so they could lay on their bets at decent odds before the form had been thoroughly analysed to death.

“Listen, this is how I reckon it’ll play out” said Puco.  The handlers and owners gelded the Rudder because they were shit sick of him misbehaving in the stalls and not working with the stable hands.  He’d become a show pony in a show of one pony.  Look at his form.  No results in three years.  Didn’t take the team with him.

Now, Big Red likes a rails run, but I have to say that the filly has a few results racked up on pretty difficult tracks.  Not a great record, no outstanding wins greater than a half head, and a tendency to be distracted by dark horses on the wrong side of the track,  but none-the-less she does have a few wins.

“What fuckin’ wins would those be ?” said a crusty from Queensland.  “Well, she got up with carbon in a late finish, the economy didn’t fall apart like most of the rest of the world, she got a tiny tax on the trainers and owners and she’s safe with kiddies.

“Last in dressage” piped up some wag from South Australia.

“Yeah, true, but she looks a lot more appealing than some fuckin’ Dalek in red speedos.

“I reckon it’s come down to that” said Puco.  “It’s a country with crappy bush tracks, shitty hay and hopeless handlers.  No way are we gunna get world-class performance from the nags here “ said Puco – and the punters took their time finishing their Trotter’s Ales.  No hurry into the TAB, the odds just weren’t attractive enough.