Holy fuck! An update!
Yeah, so it looks like that lofty goal I had of a column per week has been blown out of the water. On reflection that's not so surprising, given that I'm working just under ten hours a day four days a week and the fifth day I'm at university. Add in study, sleep, an oncoming cold and the occasional bout of mindless self-indulgence, I haven't really felt the urge to put pen to paper - or finger to keyboard, if you will.
Oh, it must be bad. I'm recycling my jokes.
It's not that I'm out of ideas, either; throughout my diary are little jotted notes from day to day of ideas for columns, sadly most of which were highly topical and now a little aged. Not in the good way, either. I had a nice piece about NSW MP Peter Lindsay mouthing off again about... something, back in February. Buggered if I can remember what. I was going to do another good one about how much it must suck to be Brendan Nelson right now back in the first week of March. In all fairness, that one's still good and probably will continue to be for the rest of his life.
I've also got one about WorkChoices and AWAs and a certain company that pays certain monies to me on a regular basis that I'm not wholly comfortable about posting less there be some kind of blowback.
Seriously, it looks to me like winning the internal election to take the helm of the Liberal party was a really bad career move. Not only has he got Tony Abbott (snigger) and Malcolm Turnbull (worrying) indulging in their own private political machinations behind his back to try to engineer their way into the top job, he's also been faced with rumours in the past month that Peter Costello (uh-oh) hasn't discounted the possibility of coming back.
That said, the Liberals really aren't doing a particularly good job of persuading us that they're a serious contender for the federal government. We (look, I say we, but I mean I. All bloggers do. We [no, this time I actually mean we, as in, bloggers] say that so it sounds like we actually know what we're talking about and what popular opinion is, which is laughable when you consider what a bunch of shut-ins we [I, that time] are.) keep getting nothing from them but knee-jerk gainsaying of whatever the Labor party says along with pointless, trivial rubbish. Most recently the hissy fit thrown by one of the Shadow Ministers (man, that's an awesome job title) about Kevin Rudd getting donations from a large Chinese IT and industrial concern, and being on vaguely friendly terms with the CEO; the accusation being that he was bought out by a foreign company.
This of course blew back in the Minister's face when it was revealed that head of the National party and former deputy PM Mark Vaile had buggered off overseas to go be a paid consultant for some resources company while at the same time drawing pay as an opposition member. It was also pointed out that the same Chinese firm that had given money to the Labor party had given a similar sum to the Liberals.
If they want to be taken seriously in time for the next election, when most political hacks are picking Labor to increase their lead, the Libs really need to lift their game and come up with some new, believable policies. They also really do need to make a firm commitment to not bring back WorkChoices. Oh, and they really, really need solid leadership. Right now it looks like there are at least three chefs and that broth is turning into more of an irish stew.
tl;dr: lots of words bemoaning my lack of free time to post updates mixed with a dry review of the Liberal Party's time in opposition thus far, sadly lacking in jokes.
Oh, it must be bad. I'm recycling my jokes.
It's not that I'm out of ideas, either; throughout my diary are little jotted notes from day to day of ideas for columns, sadly most of which were highly topical and now a little aged. Not in the good way, either. I had a nice piece about NSW MP Peter Lindsay mouthing off again about... something, back in February. Buggered if I can remember what. I was going to do another good one about how much it must suck to be Brendan Nelson right now back in the first week of March. In all fairness, that one's still good and probably will continue to be for the rest of his life.
I've also got one about WorkChoices and AWAs and a certain company that pays certain monies to me on a regular basis that I'm not wholly comfortable about posting less there be some kind of blowback.
Seriously, it looks to me like winning the internal election to take the helm of the Liberal party was a really bad career move. Not only has he got Tony Abbott (snigger) and Malcolm Turnbull (worrying) indulging in their own private political machinations behind his back to try to engineer their way into the top job, he's also been faced with rumours in the past month that Peter Costello (uh-oh) hasn't discounted the possibility of coming back.
That said, the Liberals really aren't doing a particularly good job of persuading us that they're a serious contender for the federal government. We (look, I say we, but I mean I. All bloggers do. We [no, this time I actually mean we, as in, bloggers] say that so it sounds like we actually know what we're talking about and what popular opinion is, which is laughable when you consider what a bunch of shut-ins we [I, that time] are.) keep getting nothing from them but knee-jerk gainsaying of whatever the Labor party says along with pointless, trivial rubbish. Most recently the hissy fit thrown by one of the Shadow Ministers (man, that's an awesome job title) about Kevin Rudd getting donations from a large Chinese IT and industrial concern, and being on vaguely friendly terms with the CEO; the accusation being that he was bought out by a foreign company.
This of course blew back in the Minister's face when it was revealed that head of the National party and former deputy PM Mark Vaile had buggered off overseas to go be a paid consultant for some resources company while at the same time drawing pay as an opposition member. It was also pointed out that the same Chinese firm that had given money to the Labor party had given a similar sum to the Liberals.
If they want to be taken seriously in time for the next election, when most political hacks are picking Labor to increase their lead, the Libs really need to lift their game and come up with some new, believable policies. They also really do need to make a firm commitment to not bring back WorkChoices. Oh, and they really, really need solid leadership. Right now it looks like there are at least three chefs and that broth is turning into more of an irish stew.
tl;dr: lots of words bemoaning my lack of free time to post updates mixed with a dry review of the Liberal Party's time in opposition thus far, sadly lacking in jokes.