Age bin

After the fall of the Howard government the Rudd government was pressed to set up inquiries on (a) how Australia had been dragged into an unnecessary war against Saddam Hussein that let to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and (b) who in the government had signed off on breaching Australian law and United Nations sanctions against selling wheat to Saddam Hussein.  Rudd refused, wanting to seem impartial and bipartisan. Having seen how quickly Abbot has descended into partisan witchhunts over the pink batts issue I hope that Labor politicians have learnt their lesson and after the next election will immediately move to expose the errors, misjudgements and who knows, crimes of the present cabinet.

Cars

Is it possible that if the car industry goes we will be able to have a proper debate on transport strategy, in that we won’t have any reason to favour cars over trains? We can raise emissions standards to whatever we like, no job losses; congestion charges, fbt provisions – everything is now on the table.

Once we vote out Abbott, of course. Who’s plotted the probable WA senate vote under the new LNP poll figures?

Commonplace Book

I can remember looking for this online and not finding it

Peter Cook’s revue, “Beyond the Fringe,” had a famous sketch called “The Sadder and Wiser Beaver,” Coe tells us, about a “bunch of young, would-be radical journalists who won’t admit they have sold their soul to a rapacious newspaper proprietor.” It is a sketch that works as well today as it did fifty years ago, right down to the beavers, trapped inside their illusions of subversion:

COOK: Whenever the old man has a cocktail party, there’s about ten of us - young, progressive people - we all gather up the far end of the room and … quite openly, behind our hands, we snigger at him.
BENNETT: Well, I don’t know, that doesn’t seem very much to me.
COOK: A snigger here, a snigger there - it all adds up.