Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Primary Colonic Irrigation

Your friendly spirit-swilling maniac has bought the political book of the decade.
Yesterday it filled a whole shelf at Dymocks. By lunch today they'd run out. The same was true at other shops but I found a big stash in Myer.

I chatted with the lovely old lady in Myer. About time someone spoke some truth she said, at least he's got the guts to say it like it is she said. I'm not sure I responded- it's sad he's had to resort to so much pure venom, clearly the material surrounding certain people has to be discounted somewhat.

His attack on Gough is so sad. The great man mentored him all the way, and Gough's call- that Latham, having left the leadership due to ill health, should also leave his important seat- was bang on target and honest. Clearly Latham felt the same way, it's what he went on to do. Any other call would have been nepotism.

But I'm not happy for the big questions about the faceless knife-wielding fuckwits to just dissolve under a sea of counterspin. After a day of annoying people with trackbacks and recalcitrant comments yesterday, I started to find there are others who feel like me: left wing, labor people, who don't like the damage, yet are unsurprised that the worst aspects of Labor's culture have resulted in such an explosion.

The people at the heart of the worst aspects of this culture are unapologetic. They have not moved to change their ways one iota.

Reform is not about dumping unions, nor factions, nor labor insiders who in most cases are party faithful dedicated to working for the party and for social democratic politics in Australia.

It's about reigning in power, making those things work for the party, and for Australian politics.

UPDATE: Expect updates and reviews every couple of days until I've finished it, right here in the Armagnac Diaries...

6 comments:

ms fits said...

We want a blow-by-blow review.


Feel free to use a Margaret and David-style star rating, too.

miaballerina said...

"But I'm not happy for the big questions about the faceless knife-wielding fuckwits to just dissolve under a sea of counterspin. After a day of annoying people with trackbacks and recalcitrant comments yesterday, I started to find there are others who feel like me: left wing, labor people, who don't like the damage, yet are unsurprised that the worst aspects of Labor's culture have resulted in such an explosion.

The people at the heart of the worst aspects of this culture are unapologetic. They have not moved to change their ways one iota."


Myself included....

I tried EVERYONE in this godforsaken city (Newcastle) to find a copy, and everywhere had sold out or not recieved enough copies (Angus and Robertson ordered 90, they recieved 13). Obviously, as we're not a capital city, we wouldn't be interested in "urban" politics :(

If you see any more copies in Melbourne, hide them and let me know where they are :)

BwcaBrownie said...

from my position here by the watercooler agreeing with all the above, I suspect the AusBlogosphere will have a quiet break while everybody reads . . . . .

Jeremy said...

Perhaps you should do a slacktivist-style review.

To save those of us no longer enamoured with Latham from contributing to his retirement fund.

lucy tartan said...

Yeah, thanks for reading it on my behalf Captain Haddock.

What depressess me most about this thing is that it might have done some good to get all the dirty linen aired, sorted, folded and generally dealt with *while* still in a leadership role, whereas bringing it all up now is just giving the big 'up yours'. Is that just really naive?

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