Modern Australian Politics 101

Bonkers

Another insightful article from Lenore Taylor in today's Guardian Australia online.  And yet more below the line commentary in response from yours truly, here:

I am not now, never have been nor ever could have become a supporter of Tony Abbott. Just need to make that clear cos it's reasonable to acknowledge the point of origin of one's critique. 

But truly ... 

One is left almost speechless by the self-serving, delusional hypocrisy and cant of the man. It beggars belief that he could be so out of touch with the real world, so stunningly incapable of even the mildest form of self-critical examination. And yet one wonders if he has inhabited a Tony Abbott bubble of sycophancy for so long, speaking only to trusted like-minded others who only knew how to or had the courage to say "yes Tony, whatever you think", that he may actually have persuaded himself he speaks truth?

• The leadership ballot was brought on because it was about to be revealed he was - in fact - a winner? Eh? 

• Everyone else is disloyal, careerist and backstabbing? But even he does not refute Scott Morrison's revelation that TA offered to dump Hockey to protect his Prime Ministerial skin. 

• And nothing has changed? How supremely ironic that Mr Abbott and the ALP front bench are now the only sentient beings on Earth who cling to the delusional hope that what the Tories did was simply change the sales team.

Mr Abbott can be allowed to believe or promulgate that last idea because

1. he lost and is clearly hurting, 
2. he is as bonkers as is the idea that nothing has changed and
3. his shock jock friends need some one who is no less disconnected from reality to interview for a while as they try to savage the new Prime Minister. But even the shock jocks will get bored with Tony Abbott's broken record because they were only interested in cosying up to power and poor old Tony now has none.

But the ALP needs to shake off its fondness for / reliance on their last hope - like TA - that nothing has changed. The whole game as changed. The future looks entirely different - which isn't to say that some policies won't be carried forward because they clearly will be. Others, however, will alter and the context, strategy and discourse around the central conservative agenda for Australia will be conducted in wholly different terms. Tony Abbott is irrelevant to a conversation about what the future may look like because he always has been irrelevant to any discourse about the shape of modernity. He only ever wanted to look back and return to the mythical past. That and his demonstrable incompetence are the reasons he was dumped.

Now, however, the ALP has a duty to engage with the legitimate, necessary debate about what a modern, social democratic Australia could look like and offer it to voters as a credible alternative vision to 21st Century conservatism. The longer the ALP stays in the same conversation and mind set as TA the farther behind they will fall and the more difficult it will become to persuade Australians that the modern Left has anything real and appealing to offer.

Wake up and smell Spike's tulips, Douglas

I have not been at my best since Tuesday evening.  Today, however, I crossed the threshold into a world in which spring announces its arrival.  And so I tweeted because I've become a man who tweets his news.  Who knows why?  

4 days confined to bed are OVER!!! #WakeUpAndSmellTheTulips Don't you just love being a Quad.? (That'll be a no) pic.twitter.com/Um1YaZj5ZY

— Dougie Herd (@dougie_herd) September 26, 2015

Red Star Causewayhead

What a pleasant surprise I received this morning on my Facebook page.  Tommy Geddes, friend from my days at Stirling University in the late 1970s, posted a photograph from almost 40 years ago of our six-a-side football team.  We entered an intramural football competition, played on Wednesday afternoons as I recall.  We were not very good; might even have been bad but we enjoyed ourselves.  That was the point.

I have no recollection of the photograph being taken.  I couldn't even begin to guess at who took it.  But I'm very happy Tommy found it and shared it.  Nor can I remember much about the football; none of us can.  But that's not important in any way.  We played to win at the time because what's the point of entering a competition if you don't try - at least try - to win.  We are petty sure we lost but we would have enjoyed ourselves enormously regardless.

What a team we were (from left to right, back row then front)

• Malcolm Jenkins, Students Association Permanent Secretary
• Neil Roden, Secretary of the local Communist Party Branch
• Me, Vice-President of the Students Association
• John Reid, former President of the Students Association, 
• Harry Adam, President of the Students Association
• Tommy Geddes, Immediate past President of the Students Asociation

And what a mixture of previous, at that time and future parts we played or would go on to play.  Among us there were or would be:

• 3 members of the Communist Party (at that time)
• 1 already former member of the Communist Party
• 1 former member of the Scottish National Party
• 4 current members of the Labour Party
• 1 who would become a Member of Parliament, British Cabinet member and now Member of the House of Lords
• 1 would be awarded an OBE for services to education
• 3 of us would serve on the Scottish Executive of the National Union of Students.
• 1 would become the National Secretary of the National Union of Students
• 2 served as members of the Steering Committee of NUSUK
• 1 became Chairman of Glasgow Celtic Football Club
• 1 supports Glasgow Rangers and Southampton Football Clubs
• 2 support Partick Thistle Football Club
• 1 supported Wrexham
• 1 supported Motherwell (maybe)

Of course, all of us had and have so very much more in our lives; relationships, loves, jobs, hopes and dreams (realised or not).  But we look happy in the photograph because we were.

Sometimes ... we know this to be true

Forgive me if I sound a little sceptical here.

I'm reading this article about a new phone designed by a Britishdesigner (chances are he owns an Apple Powerbook Pro) for a Swiss electronic products manufacturer. I'm in Australia so I'm reading the Guardian online article on my Chinese manufactured Anroid smart phone although it could just a easily have been using my Microsoft Surface tablet / laptop or my all-in-one desktop if I was at home. Later I shall tweet. I'll check my Facebook page and maybe see something there - on YouTube - that'll make me laugh. It could have a cat in it or be a Walking Dead meme.

That all seems pretty ordinary to me in the second decade of the 21st Century but as a 58 year old man I am nothing like as engaged with the smart technologies and their apps as the smart generations that are transforming the world.

But here's the thing - I have my relationships at home which function more or less as well or otherwise as they did or didn't 30 years ago. I have all sorts of social relations beyond the home and not online. I may even delude myself into thinking some of them have meaning (for me) and are purposeful: a work colleague's leaving do tomorrow, a friend's second child's Christening on Sunday, another friend and her 13 year old foster child coming to stay next week on holiday during which time the thirteen year old will go to the local glass artist studio with my glass artist partner to learn how to slump hot glass to make butterflies.

All of us connected as humans in a real world. Our smart technologies and platforms facilitate those connections. We all know where the off buttons are located if we really need to find them although, as sentient beings, we simply put down the phone, tablet or PC and pick up a book, get on the bicycle or bus, engage differently in whatever way we can or choose.

I just don't buy into all the cod sociological doom that comes with this guy's retro phone. I don't believe that smart phones, Facebook, Periscope or Apple are taking us to Hell in a handcart where anomie, alienation and the collapse of civilisation await.

It's a phone. Buy it or not because it's a product you want or don't want. Spare us the sociology lecture though. I have the suspicion it's much the same pitch as the papyrus salesman made to the world when the paper makers set up shop.

What a depressing end to a week of abject failure on the Australian Left

Malcolm Turnbull, happy, today.  Pic: Rob Griffith / AP

Lenore Taylor in the Guardian Australia online gives us another of her measured, perceptive readings of what's going on in Australian politics.  Meanwhile, the Australian Labor Party continues to run around like a headless chicken and / or sits immobile in the middle of the road like a stunned rabbit transfixed by the headlamps of a rapidly advancing 50 tonne truck and / or falls at the first hurdle (choose your preferred metaphor) while Malcolm Turnbull re-sets the Liberal Party's operating system and starts to map out what the Australian future looks like under a conservative government that isn't delusional, isn't backward-looking, isn't in thrall to that ridiculous fool Tony Abbott.

As is becoming usual these days for Mr Angry of Gilmore I made some comments 'under the line' which is a place ... like space ... where no one can hear you scream.  How depressed is the author of these words?

And so ... this 'modern' Conservatism follows the lead of its NZ and European counterparts to assert authority over Australian politics leaving many casualties in its wake.

Almost everyone heaves a sigh of relief that the short, embarrassing, ineffective and destructively delusional reign of Tony Abbott is over, dead, buried and cremated.

Joe Hockey leads the way to the exit door, which others will also take because they know they have been comprehensively defeated. By and large this group will accept whatever crumbs from the table they are offered to simply go away.

Andrews, Bernardi, Abetz and a few other troglodytes will bleat from the sidelines for a while until even they get bored with the sound of their own voices. Soon, not even Andrew Bolt will bother to interview them.

And the ALP - as evidenced again today by their inept, spectacular missing of the point, inability to see the bigger picture and tone deaf responses to what is clear for everyone else to see - already slips further behind, falls short and stumbles into a bleak, losing future. Their lack of understanding, analysis or credible alternative vision make this a very gloomy Sunday indeed for a left-leaning voter like me.

Bill and his team had two years to prepare for this moment. It's ghastly to realise just how bereft of ideas, how lacking in strategic nous they have shown themselves to be. Ghastly.

Don't panic, don't panic ... ok - let's panic

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ...

So Partick Thistle lost (again) this time away from home to the not so very mighty Ross County.  Even this early the writing is on the wall ... my Facebook wall as far as these words are concerned;

I can no longer hide the truth from the world.

With eight games played, no wins, only two goals scored and with an uncomfortable gap opening up between our bottom of the league position and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE LEAGUE my unofficial Partick Thistle existential threat warning has been raised from "bit of a worry" to "moderately anxious".

I love the smell of laksa in the morning

One of the facets of Sydney I miss by not living the at the moment is the range of food options available.  All over the city there are choices available from almost every part of the globe. And at lunch the range of food quality, decently priced, well cooked options is gobsmacking. You can eat crap if you must or dine like a King if you insist.  Or you can settle for a giant bowl of really good seafood laksa for $15 by a mob by the name of Sassy's by Chinta Ria in the food court on the fifth floor of the Pitt Street shopping mall. 

This experience is nothing like the chicken noodle soup ... was it by Knor? ... of my adolescence. Not even in the same universe.

Where would we be without a Sydney laksa?

Essay number 2 ...in

English lit essays seem to be a bit like those proverbial buses that you hear about.  You can wait years without seeing one then two come along at the same time.  This time it was a 'short' essay on Modernism and earlier today I submitted my 1,800 words on The Waste Land by T S Eliot.

Ever since I was introduced to Eliot's poetry I've found myself struggling with a bit of a conundrum.  Can you separate the writer from the work?  And if not, what then (if anything) might that tell you about yourself?

T S Eliot may be the greatest poet that ever put pen to paper.  Some of his poems are among the greatest ever written.  Think of Preludes, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, The 

Journey of the Magi, The Hollow Men, Four Quartets.  The list goes on.

Then, of course, there is The Waste Land  I think it truly is the greatest poem ever written in English; one of the most important texts of the 20th Century.  It is an endlessly fascinating, endlessly instructive piece of writing with a depth, complexity and subtlety that sometimes takes your novice breath away.

But what to do about the man?  A deeply conservative, somewhat misogynist, certainly anti-Semitic, high Anglican, Tory.  Those are not unfair accusations but statements of demonstrable fact.

So what does that mean for a trendy old Leftie like me?  I have no idea.

Read the poems,  Judge for yourself.

This much, however, I do know.  My essays are in.

On with the next lot of readings.

A tweet I received today with a rhetorical question

Why don't refugees go back to where they came from?

Australia can do more.

First essay in

Spike's Daffodils

Okay, it's not quite a host of golden daffodils but it's evidence enough of spring's arrival here in the nation's capital.  Me and the cat are enjoying a quiet, suburban morning together basking in the balmy heat of the sun in a cloudless sky - all nine degrees but it feels like a Scottish summer's day already.

I wrote about the daffodils - Wordsworth's rather than Spike's - as part of my essay submitted digitally last night. Digital submissions ... who knew?  Gone, it would seem, is the caffeine-fuelled, all-nighter of the 1970s, culminating in the dash across the campus to the English department, the frantic search for a pen that worked to complete the essay cover sheet before slipping it through the gaping mouth at the top of the submission box fixed to the external wall of the departmental office. Five minutes before the deadline expires, a great weight lifts from your shoulders and you think, time for a celebratory beer or three. I wonder who'll be in the bar, like me, bragging about how close we got to that box being shut.

That was then and this is now.  Last night? Check the bibliography, run Microsoft's spelling checker, upload the file ... hit send.

And how does one celebrate?

With a mug of tea and an episode of season four of The Walking Dead.  Avert your delicate gaze Douglas as you not-quite-watch our raggle-taggle band of survivalist heroes at the very limits of their existential tethers finding even more novel ways to stab, smash, crush, squash, slice, dice and decapitate an almost limitless supply of zombies.

That could almost be a metaphor for the intellectual processes of preparing 2,800 words on 18th Century Romantic poets and the gendered pursuit of the sublime.  Or not.  

It's done and in.  Just not like the old days.

Thank goodness.

Time for the first essay

And I'm back to the Romantics.

Wordsworth by William Shuter

                                         For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things

I have been enthralled by those lines and the idea behind them since the first time I read William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, which you can read here.  But my task in the first essay of my first semester at the Australian National University, following my return to undergraduate study, is to take the poems apart.

Four hundred words or so into my essay, here’s my argument against Coleridge and Wordsworth:

This essay discusses the treatment of gender in the poems.  In contrast to the poets’ claims to be addressing the natural or universal characteristics of the human condition this essay argues that the texts reveal a gendered view of ‘the vast empire of human society’ in which the circumstances, condition and perspective of the male – especially the creative imagination of the male poet – is privileged within the 'natural' world, the poetry that emerges from the male experience of that world and in relation to women who are assumed to be inferior to men.

Sorry guys, although I still love many of your works.

News from the colonies to the old country

So my name cropped up in a Facebook wander down memory lane by some old friends peppered across the UK now.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s we were part of the same student politics organisation.  There were ups and downs, as I recall those times, but it was fun to be involved.  They were exciting times in which we helped to move the world forward in some areas, were beaten back in others.

I felt no real need to enter into the nostalgia but then my name came up.  Someone then asked, "is Dougie Herd still alive?"  Time, I thought, to intervene.  So I added these words to the conversation:

Call this living comrades? Call this alive?

I'm in a Tory Hell with a Prime Minister that thinks the 16th Century was a bit advanced, that global warming is a left wing conspiracy, that Prince Phillip needed a Knighthood from the Australian people, that women have a place but only one of them is good enough for that place to be in his Cabinet, that it's ok for his sister to be gay but not ok for his sister to marry the woman she lives with ... and that football is played with a rugby ball and goals with no nets. 

I could go on but then I look at home and see George Osborne is considered by some to be an economic progressive and free-thinking, intellectual power house.

If that's all not bad enough .... and it is ... we have three types of spiders in our back garden that could kill you if you look at them, brown snakes that'll stop your heart beating if you even think to breathe in the same space as them and a giant chicken-like bird called a Cassowary that could rip your lungs out in five seconds. And that's before we even mention the sharks, sting rays and crocodiles.

All things considered though ... one mustn't grumble.

A luta continua!! A luta continua.