Yay for the Big C!

No I don't mean Cancer!

The House of Reps voted the other day to return administration of the drug RU486 to the TGA, removing one tiny reign of power from the grasp of a politician. Now, I am not about to dive into a rant about Tony Abbot, I would never vote for him, but his beliefs- whatever sustains him within reason- are his own affair. I will say (to confuse the correspondent who called me a Communist) that I don't think Kerry Nettle did the right thing with her t-shirt. (Keep your rosary's off my ovary's) One of the problems faced by the left is the perception that we are all a bunch of student radicals who have not grown up yet. Nettles T-shirt doesn't really help that perception. Anyway not really what I wanted to talk about.

Lyn Allison, Leader of the Australian Democrats, was the originator of the private members bill, legislation drafted in line with Democrat social policy. Allowed a conscience vote it ripped through both houses, attempts at stonewalling, ammendation and dare we say it squashing the bill outright, failed. It passed with a huge majority in both houses.

The thing I find most gratifying, is not the social justice victory for women, gratifying though it is, but rather what the process represents.

Increasingly parliament has been dominated by the whole "party discipline"cheap insult wedge and division style of politics so beloved of our esteemed Prime Miniature. I must admit I couldn't believe he would relinquish even the small amount of power he did to allow the conscience vote, yes I know he did the stern uncle thing in the lower house, basically trying to brow beat the Libs into voting no.

The thing that truly impresses me is the manner in which the bill entered the house in the first place. Allison drafts a private members bill, then forms a cross party coalition with members of labor, libs and nationals.

Is this the merest glimmer, the simplest suggestion that maybe things are changing, that the macho posturing, huffing, puffing and blowing from the likes of Howard and Beazley could be on the way to becoming a thing of the past?

Truthfully, the answer is in all likelyhood no.

That would be sensible, honest and altruistic, something that modern politics could never be accused of being. On the otherhand we can only hope.

Having said all of that, the list of who voted where that is available on the Bartlett Diaries
www.andrewbartlett.com/blog/?p=138 site makes for interesting reading. Particularly when one looks at the patterns of the Liberal Party. Surprises included Vanstone voting for the bill, but also the way the votes align.

On one side we have Abbot, Howard and Downer. On the other the likes of Andrew Southcott, Malcolm Turnbull QC and Peter Costello. Is this more evidence of the nasty factional split that we all know lies at the heart of the Libs? Could this be Costello, sickening of being shafted by Howard (think over the last few months) positioning himself for another run at the top job. Could this even be evidence of a new moderate or liberal consrvatism.

I can't wait to see what happens next!

Why the hell would you vote conservative

Dana Vaile, fine upstanding member of the Howard conservative "government"wants the Senates fine work on RU486 overturned, because, according to her we are being aborted out of existing allowing Muslims to take over Australia.

No, I am not making this up, I actually heard the @##%^&% woman say this on the electronic media.

No she wasn't being ironic.

No she isn't misquoted.

Before you know it she will want white australia and the dictation test brought back.

Now, a challenge, I want anyone out there, and I mean anyone who is even thinking that there is a good reason to vote conservative, especially after this ridiculous statement by Vaile to convince me there is actually a reason to do so.

good night and good luck

professionally cynical

So after last nights burst of honesty and self disclosure, back to the professional cynicism

So here goes

The Government hehehehehehehehehe!

George W Bush hehehehehehehehehehehe!

Rich people hehehehehehehe!

balance restored

slack

Yep, a fair statement, it's been a while since I posted anything, lazy I guess.

So anyway, I am sitting here with a half finished bottle of the BNJ at my elbow (if you don't know what it is, I aint telling!) and over the top of the screen I can see Brenda Blethyn on the gogglebox. Probably the best approach with wee Brenda, an excellent actor, but one given to adopting very annoying voices.

I can't actually hear her because I have a set of cans on and a cd playing, Rarities 6 a compilation of Big Country stuff, sort of early through mid period.

So I suppose it is time to at least partly explain the title of this blog, and talk a bit about a band who have got well and truly under my skin to the point where they are truly a soundtrack for my life. Melodramatic I know, but then isn't that the whole point of the weblog, and no I don't intend decending fully into the land of the cliche and starting chronicling the wacky antics of my cats!

So lets go back a few years, its the early 1980's.

Warm, balmy days in the Riverland, air that feels warm on the skin, muscle shirt and shorts, smell of summer in the air. Sort of a mix of dust, citrus, maybe the odd distant wiff of the river, and let's be real diesel and pesticide.

I'm up a ladder, this is my holiday job. Still at school and all that with faint hopes of a career in motorsport so need money.

The ladder is a 20 foot bow ladder, one of the more lethal ideas of the fruit industry, unstable at the best of times, with a six foot fruitpicker with a ten kilo bag of olives around his neck at the top positively lethal.

Tucked up under a tree is a little grey fergie, the classic postwar British Tractor with a fruit trailer stacked with olive boxes, waterbottle, lunch and radio.

This is a late 60's model with something like solid state written in natty silver cursive script on the front (bloody thing ran on Dry Cell battteries if I remember right) It is tuned to American Top 40 on Shortwave.

Amid the wanky tones of good old Casey Casem and his posse of studio singers music occasionally pops out, unless of course the sun passes behind a cloud when we get a noise like a Russian Submarine and bursts of what appears to be Japanese.

Anyway in a moment of clarity ole Casey says

And here is a new one from Big Country""

Out comes a sound.

A savage, feral noise and I stop work and hang off the ladder to listen.

A cross between Punk (1976 not the pseudo Good Charlotte wank of today), the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and God knows what.

It is In a Big Country.

Im lost, smitten isn't the word, but something close. All the hair on the back of my neck stands up, goose pimples and the lot.

Exciting, joyful, who knows and with lines that go straight to my brain,

"Pull your head off the floor, come up screaming, cry out for everything you ever might have wanted!"

This is great, this speaks to me. Make no bones about it, at 16 or so, I feel alienated, stuck in this stupid little country town. Lived there for the bulk of my life to that point, but not a local. God no! So much of rural Australian life, with its boof headed football focussed mentallity, its getting drunk on a Saturday and then marrying someone who might or might not be your cousin leaves me cold. Didn't really fit in, partly didn't want to, partly couldn't bring myself to make the effort.

Then comes this band, from Dunfermline, via the USA and space, to fight its way through the crop of aweful haircut bands. Come on, could anyone look at "Flock of Seagulls"without laughing? Guitars on the radio, for the first time in a while.

Big, fat, romantic Celtic guitars, check shirts and a lyrical sensibility far removed from the right wing conservative, redneck world I lived in.

This love stays with me, through girlfriends, through break ups, through success and failure. University degrees and jobs, sports highs and sports lows. Through bottles of scotch and those days where for no reason you put them on loud in an empty house and stand there with tears running down your cheeks.

Why?

Stuart Adamson, songwriter, guitars and great human being, the man who invented the Edge, who in my opinion (as biased as it is, and I make no apologies, this is a blog and blogs are about indulgence) one of the great musicians and songwriters took his life in December 2001. Just as I was on honeymoon in the UK, finally managed to get there, reaping a seed I sowed back in 1982 that day up the ladder.

I found myself driving through the kingdom of Fife with my wife (yes, yes get over it, it rhymes!) with tears running down my face.

Why?

I don't really know, loss I guess. Although I never got closer to this band in a physical sense than collecting albums, singles and so on, catching the odd glimpse of the guys on Rage and so on, they have been an integral part of who I am. Politically, musically, ethically I would lay claim to having been heavilly influenced by these guys and Stuart's writing in particular.

Could it be a nostalgic thing? Sure, I think back and perversely, find that period of my life takes on a bit of a warm glow. Happy days bombing around in my little Ford Escort, hanging the tail out, chasing BMW's up twisting hills, and all the while with "The Crossing"or "Steeltown"blasting out of the stereo. Or long summer afternoons on the bed reading, with my copy of "The Crossing"stretching thinner and thinner until the tape let go.

Anyway, enough revelation, time for another glass of the BNJ and sign off.

wheat

So, there is this group, the Australian Wheat Board, designed to sell wheat to the world on behalf of the growers of Australia. It decides that, rather than follow the rest of the world, and boycott Iraq(leaving aside the horrors caused by the blockade) they decide to sell their wheat to Iraq.

Then to make things more interesting, they indulge in a little Basksheesh, kickbacks and greasing of palms with the one the only, the boogeyman of Baghdad, Mr. Saddam Hussein.

Then, when it comes to light, our Prime Miniature, the right orrible John Winston Howard and his cronies begin the spin. Listen closely, because this is how it works.

1. What are you talking about?

2. It didn't really happen, and it's not that important, and so what if it did?

3. What?

4. It is how you do business in this part of the world.

5. It is un-australian to criticise our wheat board because they were fighting for the rights of the wheat growers.

Of course he is too clever by half to do this himself. Instead we get the slavering pack of tame media hacks, the backbenchers who want promotion and of course the handy retired formers.

At the last moment, when it looks like they can sustain no further damage, he will ride to the rescue aboard his gleaming beige shetland pony.

What I never understand is how it is that this pattern of denial, obfuscation, deceit and arrogance is played out over and again without the great unwashed tumbling.