News thread

I was woken up this morning by this shaking our house. I'm far enough away from the epicentre that it was just a bit of a laugh, but it was serious business for some folks. Still, I've had another part of the quintessential Japanese experience now.

Glad you're not one of the three sir.

Ah, so this is what it is like to have more money than sense.

Feels like a PR stunt. A rather bad taste PR stunt.

Meanwhile in British news, HAHAHAHAHAHA.

In sadder, but more relevant, news, it's three years since we lost Iwata

I find myself wondering how feasible/ appropriate it would be to visit his grave. Maybe I could lay a wreath (or appropriate Japanese equivalent) from all of us.

I reckon just playing some games he worked on is the best way of honouring his legacy.

I know today's big news story is a bad one again (what else is new), but can we all just appreciate this superb bit of trolling.

I know you're a young man, and not at risk, but I hope you're okay Drunka.

Yeah, clocked that article earlier on! Those temperatures had me sweating just reading them - I was struggling with 28 degrees in Manchester, let alone 40!

35 tomorrow. Bugger this for a laugh.

Surely Elon Musk can just manufacture us some cloud producing drones? The heat doesn't show any signs of stopping until a very humid thunderstorm of Friday. I hope its a big one, I like thunderstorms...

He's too busy calling bone fide heroes paedophiles on Twitter, last I heard.

In other news: roll on Autumn.

Balladeer wrote:

He's too busy calling bone fide heroes paedophiles on Twitter, last I heard.

I'll raise an eyebrow at anyone who idolises Musk after all the awful, petulant behaviour he's exhibited over the last year.

We had a bit of a toastier day today up in Scotland, but not 35 degrees toasty.

22 daily high! Yass! This is what I'm talking about.

JayMoyles wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

He's too busy calling bone fide heroes paedophiles on Twitter, last I heard.

I'll raise an eyebrow at anyone who idolises Musk after all the awful, petulant behaviour he's exhibited over the last year.

Excuse me good sir, I'll have you know that behaviour isn't petulant, it's presidential!  

Same thing nowadays.

I enjoyed this story a lot, mind.

Guess what time of year it is!  

That's right, time for the bi-annual replacement of the Prime Minister by their own party!  You read that right, Australia's favourite sport the Leadership Spill is back on again, and the craziest it has ever been! We basically don't even have a government right now! Half the ministry has quit and the entire party is too busy in-fighting to actually do anything! Genuinely fun to watch!

I kid you not what's happening here right now is like the plotline for a season of House of Cards, it's that bonkers.

So, for those unfamiliar with australian politics (I'd assume most people round here), we have a modern history with the leader of the nation getting knifed by their own party in the tail-end of their term.  In fact since John Howard lost an election back in 2007 not a single Prime Minister that won office was around to contest the next election!

Yep, all four Prime Ministers since Howard got knifed by their own party's!  

the past, should you want to brief yourself on it:

And that brings us to the latest spectacle!  Malcom Turnbull was originally dumped as opposition leader because he (oh dear lord!) compromised with the sitting government over climate policy!  Such a heinous crime!  

Fastforward about six years and to Tony Abbott's historically awful reign as Prime Minister.  The party was so desperate that even the right wing branch of the party was willing, under conditions, to give Malcom the job.  Such conditions are unknown, however most of us suspect it had to do with his giving up his stance on centrist policies and taking a hard stance against climate change and other social issues like gay marriage (which he personally supported, hence the plebesite even happening).  

And so here we are today, and the rabid right of the Liberals have had it with Turnbull!  Yep, they're trying to take over the government and party again (because the fact Abbott was the single most despised person to ever lead the nation didn't clue them in that Australians want the "sensible center", not right wing conservatism).  

Oh, but this execution of a Prime Minister has taken a far more dramatic turn compared to the previous knifings.  In the past the knifings took the form of power brokers in the background slowly doing their thing until the challenger had the numbers to swoop in and get the kill.  This time that didn't happen.  No, this farce has been going for three days!

On Tuesday rumblings started that Potato-head Peter Duttin was preparing to challenge Turnbull for the leadership.  Steam was built, and by the end of the day it looked like Turnbull would be felled the following day.  

Wednesday began with Turnbull calling a snap-leadership spill, surprising Dutton who had yet to properly martial his forces.  The result?  Turnbull won, but by such a small margin he was officially the political equivalent of a zombie.  Various members of the cabinet came to Turnbull to offer their resigantion over the change of allegiances (most were refused).

Thursday, today, was the most bizarre and farcical thing I think anyone has seen in Canberra.  Dutton's allies had spent Wednesday evening playing mindgames and trying to build a sense of urgency, a letter petition the Prime Minister for another leadership spill was being circulated and signed by members of Parliment.  The morning saw his authority eroded until he was standing on an island so small it barely covers his feet, with damn near all of his cabinet quitting.

It seemed that he would be gone by lunchtime!  But no!  Turnbull, after spending years kowtowing to the right of the party only for them to renege on the deal and try to toss him aside had other plans for the traitorous Peter Dutton!  Dutton earlier in the day had gone to the PM and declared openly that he was ready to challenge and that he was certain he had the numbers while Turnbull lacked them.  

So how did Turnbull respond to this?  By coming out just after lunchtime, not to deliver his resignation or announce another spill, but to flat out inform all those conspiring against him to bring him this petition with no less than a majority of the party signing it.  Then, once this was provided, he would call a meeting tomorrow lunchtime and the leadership spill, should it be agreed on by the party, would begin.  At this point he would not even contest, and instead open the floor to all challengers.  He would then quit parliament effective immediately (that last causes MASSIVE problems for the Liberals, who only have a majority government by one, so losing him means minority government).

It was the political equivalent of him telling his would-be killers to do it like men.  It also serves another purpose that a lot of the media here has missed, because this delay tactic has given the Moderate Faction time to prepare their own candidate to contest the leadership spill.  Politics within politics!  

So, where once Dutton seemed a shoe-in, it could now be any one of three people this time tomorrow as leader!  Or maybe even still Turnbull if he decided to get petty and send Parliament off for the two week break that was about to occur!

Personally I'm enjoying the s***show.  I have absolutely no love for the right of the Liberals, and so anything that undermines them is enjoyable to watch.  Never did I dream something this spectacular would occur a week ago though, it's honestly so melodramatic I'd swear I was watching House Of Cards if it wasn't for the fact I was watching the new instead.  

To be fair, that sounds more fun than British politics, which is mostly making fun of our premier's inability to dance or deeply depressing. Given that I can't dance myself, I'm a bit uncomfortable about all that.

In the wake of Japan's typhoon, you'll be relieved to know that Drunka's been in touch. He's fine, his girlfriend is inconvenienced but fine, and it's all good.

Two weeks and the world is still talking about the Serena thing.  

If not the world then definitely the Australian media.  Got a interview coming on sunday that's been flogged all week.  I'm just so over all of this (so much so I shall whine about it!!!!), she got outplayed, spat the dummy, then had a tantrum about the umpire doing things he was well within the rules of the game to do.

And yeah, out politics is nothing if not hilarious. The aftershocks of the spill are still going on too. Duttin lost to Scott Morrison (who's right of center, but not hard-right like Duttin and Abbott. Still too right wing for my tastes), and since then Duttin's been embroiled in scandals involving his potential abusing of his powers as Immigration Minister.

Turns out he'd been letting in au pairs that, when traced to their employers, were being hired by people he had affiliations with from before his time as a politician! He, of course, contests that he did all of this as favours for mates, and his party is so far resisting calls to send Duttin to the High Court, but it's a scandal that refuses to go away for him and has effectively killed any chances of him ever getting top job (methinks someone on the inside is taking a bit of revenge for what he did).

That's not the only bloodletting that's been going on in the Liberal party though. Tales of sexism and bullying are flying around, with many senior women in the Liberal party basically saying that it goes on and was in a fever pitch during the leadership struggles. Several have either quit or announced they won't be contesting the next election (which will be between now and early next year) in protest.

All up the Liberal party is a mess right now, and the leadership spill has opened up rifts between the moderates and conservatives that are not only impossible to heal before the next election, but so bad I suspect will never heal. Indeed I wager they go even further to the right after they lose the next election, which has a whole host of issues I wont get into.

I'm just sitting back and enjoying the show.

Did you think Australian politics hit peak crazy a few months ago when the Liberal party knifed the Prime Minister for reasons neither the now-former Prime Minister and the Liberals can articulate?

Well don't worry, because things got even crazier this week!  

The Coalition (a alliance of two right-wing political parties, the Liberals and the Nationals) has been wheeling since the by-election in the seat of Wentworth.  Said seat was formally held by, you guessed it, Malcolm Turnbull, who resigned from parliament after his demise as leader.  

The Liberals lost the seat of Wentworth to an independant.  This was an unprecedented loss, as the seat was known as a "Blue Ribbon" seat, a seat so safe for the Liberals that they could do damn near anything and retain it because they held it by such a large margin (if you lot heard about the idea of Australia moving its embassy to Jerusalem know that this by-election is what caused said idea to be floated, a last-ditch and pathetic attempt to sway a section of the seat into sticking with the Liberals despite the fact that the party had just knifed their representative for their own personal spite).  

And so we learned what it took to lose a Blue Ribbon seat with the fall of Turnbull.  All you had to do was lead a messy coup against the sitting Prime Minister and member of that seat.

Since this event chaos has reigned in the government.  Scott Morison has done absolutely nothing of note, he hasn't even had a message for the public.  No, since taking over he has spent most of the time acting as if everything is normal, and yet we have not once had an outline of what the agenda of the government is, nor seen any policy from them.  

Instead we have had the news plagued by disunity.  Accusations of bullying and sexism running rife in Parliament, with female members of the Liberals increasingly making their positions clear.

And so we arrive to the last week in Parliament.  It started with a female member of the Coalition quitting the party and joining the crossbench as part of the rapidly growing female independents.  It ended with Scott Morison doing the unprecedented.  In the next eight months Parliament will sit for just eleven days.  

That's right, our government is going on holiday for eight months.  With full pay by the tax payer.

Imagine if you turned up to work one day and said you weren't going to carry out ninty percent of your tasks.  You'd be sacked in about ten seconds.  And yet that is exactly what the government is doing.

I cannot fathom how they think this is remotely smart.  Strategically this is the worst thing I have ever seen a politician do.  By doing this Scott Morrison has not only left the public to fester over their distaste of the government, but given their opposition eight months to run around the country to say whatever they like about them.  

They say that when you're taking a beating you ultimately just want it to end.  Well, Scott Morrison has found the most incompetent way of doing just that.  He has ended his pain.  Our pain as the public, watching a paralysed incompetent government shamble its way through the next eight months, shall have to wait for said length of time before it can find release.  And it will find that release by pulverising the Coalition so badly I suspect they might not retake government for a generation.

So, how are you lot enjoying your first real taste of Australian politics?

You should count yourselves lucky you've got that clause that prevents another leadership spill being called for a year. Things get messy without that sort of thing, the favoured tactic here is to mortally wound the PM in a first leadership spill, then come back for a fatal attempt a couple of months down the track after they've had time to bleed out a bit. In the meantime the media spends the entire time in a frenzy where all they can talk about is the instability of the government.

I'm no fan of May, but I'm almost glad she weathered the storm as I do not like the Brexiteer Bunch from the Tory government, like Rees-Mog and his ilk.

We're still sailing in stormy weather on the SS Uncertainty though...

Bust out the guillotines I say. We're a couple of centuries overdue.

Yeah, the future is definitely looking uncertain right now. If there's one thing I wouldn't be surprised to see happen, it's backdoor destabilisation. Julia Gillard saw off a challenge from Rudd, who proceeded to simply have his supporters in the cabinet leak and undermine Gillard for the next year and a half until she was all but forced to call another spill she knew she'd lose. They may not be able to challenge for another year, but their type is only too happy to go back into the woodwork and eat it out like a pack of termites instead.

It'd be almost funny if it wasn't sad. This what your lot are like all the time, Athers? What a nightmare. It's almost like Brexit has been a great big mistake...

JayMoyles wrote:

I'm no fan of May, but I'm almost glad she weathered the storm as I do not like the Brexiteer Bunch from the Tory government, like Rees-Mog and his ilk.

This is my boat. We're staying in the frying pan for now.