Australia’s Jonestown massacre

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Do those political morons who led the coup really believe that the result we have actually had is better than the one we would have had if Tony had still been leader? And listening to the campaign speech delivered six hours after the polls had closed made me appreciate just what a guilty mind Malcolm obviously now has. Other than the brute fact of his steel-plated ego protector, he would have fallen on his sword tonight, instead of telling us what a genius he’d been in destroying a party structure and policy position that had been carefully crafted over those many years of opposition and then in the first year and a half of government. He has also created a Senate eminently workable for a Labor Government but one in which the Coalition will be hard pressed to get a single issue of substance legislated.

The good news is that even with Malcolm leading the party, there is enough sanity left in the country to have kept Labor out. And it does seem possible that we have ended up with exactly the outcome I had hoped for. I wrote a post a week or so back on You don’t have to wait three years and an election cycle (or two). There I suggested:

The strategy has to be to get the Libs over the line and then see Malcolm turfed out before the year comes to an end. Whatever he may think, the Turnbull agenda is comprehensively dead.

The death of Turnbull’s agenda is even more apparent now than it was a week ago. But if the Libs do get over the line – which is more likely than not but by no means certain – he must go. He won’t want to because he never sees the slightest fault in himself in anything he does, but that’s the reality. I don’t know how it should be arranged but arranged it must be. The Party that drank the Turnbull Kool Aid must now find renewal which will not happen until Malcolm is finally gone.

What you don’t know can hurt you

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These are the questions that come from an article on HOW A GENERATION LOST ITS COMMON CULTURE, but all it really shows is the chasm that separates the generations. No one would know this, but what’s worse, no one among the young would think it matters.

Ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? What are the Federalist Papers?

None of them understand how an economy works, which I think is infinitely worse. They could barely give you a coherent explanation how their bread and milk find their way to the kitchen. But then again, neither could most adults.

They don’t know that their societies have enemies, or even have enough knowledge of what their society is, and how it is different from all others, to know that it needs to be protected, nor would they know how to do it.

It seems bad to me and to the chap who wrote the article, but who knows if it is? But if it does turn out to matter as we think, consequences will follow. Until then, but only until then, we shall just go on as we have.

Election advice from The Age and SMH

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If you don’t think the fix is in, you should read the editorial today in The Age. It begins:

Voting requires a leap of faith, a trust in candidates and parties to deliver on policies and potential. And when Australians go to the ballot boxes on Saturday, there is an added layer of faith required in voting for the Coalition – that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will stamp his authority as a progressive leader on a party whose hardline conservatives have somewhat shackled him since he replaced their champion, Tony Abbott.

But, on balance, that is the leap The Age believes voters should make. Although there is disappointment about Mr Turnbull’s performance, and notwithstanding the unexpectedly robust recovery Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has staged, there is not a sufficient case to take the rare and disruptive step of removing a federal government after only one term.

And just in case you missed it in The Age, here is the concluding para in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Given the choice between a Coalition led by the socially progressive economic reformer Mr Turnbull, and a Shorten-led Labor party backed by reform-resistant unions, we support the election of a Turnbull government.

What else is there to to know? Vote accordingly.

FURTHER THOUGHTS: A stray comment picked up by Tim Blair.

Another senior Right MP said there were “swings to Labor everywhere’’ and claimed “Albo’s people are doing their best to reduce the number of seats Bill can win”.

There are some who normally vote Liberal who are trying to lose to Labor while there are those who are normally Labor trying to lose to the Libs. Daniel Andrews taking on the Volunteer Firefighters in Victoria makes no sense if you are trying to preserve votes for the ALP but makes incredible sense if your aim is to have Albanese-Plibersek ready for 2019. And weirdly, with all the help the Libs are getting from Labor, Malcolm is still only 50.5 to 49.5 according to The Oz today. Even with all the left media and the left of the ALP doing all they can, Malcolm is still only just marginally ahead of 50-50.

The new racism

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From The New Reform Club: Reflections on the Revolution in the UK – Number 4. The first three can also be found at the link.

A fictionalized exchange on television between any Labour candidate for MP and an audience member during the 2015 general election …

Labour Candidate for Parliament: We hear your pain.

Audience Member: My neighbourhood is being transformed by mass migration. I don’t like many of these changes.

Labour Candidate for Parliament: I understand. New immigrants—frequently coming without skills that fit the modern U.K. economy—cause wage compression at the low end of the wage scale. We will make sure employers pay the minimum wage; we will ensure that your economic interests are protected.

Audience Member: No, that’s not my point (at least, that’s not my only point). I don’t like how our society is being changed by mass immigration. I don’t like polygamy. It is illegal, but no one gets prosecuted for it. I don’t like FGM. It too is illegal, but it is not actively prosecuted. I don’t like it when the immigrants’ customs are accommodated in these ways—I don’t want our criminal laws ignored by the immigrants or by the police and the prosecutors. It makes me feel unsafe—it makes me think the immigrants’ way of life is preferred over ours. The immigrants should be integrated into our communities, not the other way around.

Labour Candidate for Parliament: I understand. We will work to ensure that your wages are not compressed.

Audience Member: You’re not listening. That’s not what I said: I don’t like the direction your party’s immigration policies under Blair & Brown have taken our country. I don’t like where we are now as a result—not that Cameron has done anything to modify those policies.

Labour Candidate for Parliament: No, that’s not right. My job is not to ensure your vision of the good society. I live in the real world, in the EU which determines U.K. immigration policy, not in your antiquated vision of Little England and William Blake’s Jerusalem. My job is to protect your objectively rooted economic interests. I will do that by monitoring and controlling the behaviour of employers via the minimum wage, unions, and collective bargaining. But once that is done, then we must take all newcomers on an equal basis, particularly those claiming asylum. We should not pick and choose immigrants based on their likelihood to integrate into the extant political community. Picking and choosing immigrants based on their values (or language, or willingness to learn our language) is unfair to immigrants. Of course, as a result, society may evolve in a direction you don’t like. That could happen. But we are morally obliged (as we are obliged under international law) to take that risk. Your trying to block such a development in favour of your parochial Little England values is morally objectionable. Your values are no better than my values and no better than the immigrants’ values. Your language (English) should not be favoured over the immigrants’ languages. Our diversity must respect these differences. In fact, your trying to determine your society’s demographic future—through immigration controls—is (white van man) racism.

Simply put, you don’t have a right to decide what sort of society this will be: you don’t have a right to hold such an opinion. Sorry—that was over broad. I suppose you may hold any opinion you want; you can even voice it in private and public. What I mean is that I—as your member of Parliament—will not and should not value your opinion. This country, i.e., this country’s future, is not yours. You and your family just happen to live here.

Audience Member: My grandparents voted for Bevan & Gaitskell, and my parents voted for Frank Field & Tony Benn. You have lost my support, and I guess I want my country back.

The only reason the Libs might win is because of the boats, Malcolm

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On the one hand in the final Fairfax-IPSOS poll we find Dead heat on election eve as final poll points to cliffhanger in The Australian Online, the lead story is Turnbull Rebukes Abbott on Boats.

Malcolm Turnbull has rebuked Tony Abbott’s call to hammer Labor on national security and asylum-seekers, staking his re-election on his intimate understanding of the economy.

The Prime Minister, blitzing the morning television shows, dismissed Mr Abbott’s suggestion this week that the Coalition should have exploited its traditional strengths of defence, security and immigration.

“The big issue in this election, Sam – and I’ve been all around the country for eight weeks, as you know… is the economy,” he told Seven’s Samantha Armytage.

Mr Turnbull said that, unlike Mr Shorten who had spent his career in politics and the labour movement, he understood as a businessman “what makes the economy hum”.

It’s unbelievable how politically inept Malcolm is. He is the worst political leader of any major party in Australian history. Even if he thought it, the last thing he should be doing on the day before is attacking members of his own party. All will be revealed tomorrow.

The first day on the Somme – July 1, 1916

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Somme-LaBoisselle_1st_July_1916_Header

FIRST DAY OF THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME

The 1st July 1916 was the opening day of the Anglo-French offensive that became known as the Battle of the Somme. It was the middle day of the middle year of the First World War and is principally remembered as the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. On the first day of the Somme 57,470 British soldiers became casualties of which 19,240 were either killed or died of their wounds. It has for many come to represent the futility and sacrifice of the First World War, with lines of infantry walking across No-Man’s-Land into the machine guns of the enemy.

The most terrible battle of the most momentous war in European history began a century ago today. As a pure coincidence, I am reading John Buchan’s Greenmantle, published itself in 1916. From Buchan’s biographical details at the start of the edition I have there is this:

During the First World War he worked as a war correspondent for The Times, before joining the British Army Intelligence Corps and writing speeches for Sir Douglas Haig. His experience of war left him vehemently opposed to armed conflict. He wrote many novels, poems, biographies, histories and works of social interest but is most famous for his Richard Hannay novels, The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle.

In its own way a story that has a modern veneer but you will see why the BBC began and then abandoned a dramatisation of the book in 2007 from this para from the summary of the book on the back cover of my edition of the novel.

The Germans with their Turkish allies are planning to stir up a revolt in the Muslim world that could leave Egypt, India and North Africa in disarray.

The EU was intended to bring such conflicts to an end. History, however, remains open ended as it will and must always be.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail commemorative gallery marking the day in England.Here is how the battle is described:

Synonymous for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of men, the Battle of the Somme was one of the most controversial conflicts of the First World War.

The battle took place North of the River Somme in France from July 1 to November 13, 1916.

On the first day alone British forces suffered casualties of 40,000 and deaths of 20,000, with 60 per cent of all of those killed being officers.

Designed to relieve pressure on French forces at Verdun, the Battle was the mastermind of General Douglas Haig and involved 750,000 British soldiers across 27 divisions.

By the end of the bloody and brutal battle Allied forces had managed to capture only six miles of land. The British suffered 429,000 casualties, the French suffered 195,000 and the Germans 650,000.

Prior to the battle the British bombarded German lines with 1.6 million shells in an effort to weaken their resolve, but the Germans were heavily fortified and many of the shells did not go off.

Haig, unaware of his bombardment’s failure, was so confident in his tactics that he ordered his men to walk across the battlefield. As a result many were tragically mowed down by machine gun fire as soon as they left their trench.

The general’s tactics remain controversial to this day with military historians, soldiers and biographers conflicted over whether his decisions were necessary or foolhardy.

If ever there was a war to end all wars, this was it. We now know no such war exists. Those who would live in peace must therefore always prepare for war.

What we have lost

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Compare and contrast, all picked up from Andrew Bolt, which includes this quote from Terry McCrann:

Australia is really being asked to vote for an Abbott government or a Rudd+Gillard one. You might ostensibly be voting for Turnbull or Shorten, but you will be getting the policies of their predecessors.

First there is Tony Abbott who would not only have won the election hands down, but would have ended up with a mandate to do many of the tasks that need doing. First the truncated text and then Abbott being interviewed.

Both major parties are promising more spending, more taxes and more debt in this disgraceful election. Fresh from being trashed by Malcolm Turnbull twice in a week, Tony Abbott offers the most guarded criticism:

“This has been an election campaign where a lot of the issues have been touched on without really being developed,” he said. “Obviously there is a huge budget repair job that needs to be done. National security has played almost no part in this campaign, even border security has been just an intermittent visitor to the campaign. So I guess if those really big issues aren’t front and centre, less substantial stuff will be front and centre.”

And then there is this, which I suppose is intended to encourage people to vote for the Libs which just shows how lacking in insight he is.

There really is much to fear whichever way it goes. What is worse, that of the two, Malcolm is not as bright as Bill and far more to the left.