As 2012 slowly shakes off 2011 and starts to evolve into it's own fully formed year, it's probably worth taking note of what will be one of this year's defining events: the 2012 US Presidential Election.
Well, you may as well take note of it, as it will be impossible to avoid it.
With the global obsession with American culture showing no signs of flagging, and poltiical candidates showing an ever greater reliance on social media and the internet, the US election is now something that goes far beyond battleground states like Ohio and Florida. It's now everywhere and anywhere, an enormously expensive, theatrical game of high stakes poker played out by power suited men and women who have decided that this is the year to chance their arm and try for the top job. It's a bit like the 'West Wing' really, although without all the robust policy debate, and a bit like a reality TV show, although without the really ace prizes.
And, as such, it's totally captivating. Certainly much more so than our locally produced version of the same thing, which seems to be composed entirely of two dour, thoroughly unlikeable gits telling an indifferent public how much they hate everything.
But the Yanks infuse their election cycle with a large degree of splash and showmanship, so as to try and keep people's attention. Which is probably needed, as their election campaign runs on much longer than you would think is necessary. It is now January, with the election set for November 7, and the Republican candidates have been at it, and each other, for about 3 months. Longer if you factor in the time they spend fund raising and organising before the politickin' actually begins.
But before we get down to any sort of serious analysis of how the US election may unfold this year, it's probably worth highlighting another prominent feature of politics in the states.
Nuttiness.
That's right, things always get a little nutty, a little fruity and a little weird on the campaign trail in America. This can come from the candidates themselves or the public, but the light hearted, high spirited, loopy fru fru spirit is never far from the surface in any Presidential campaign.
Two examples.
In the recently concluded Republican Primary in New Hampshire (won by front runner Mitt Romney), second place fell to veteran congressman Ron Paul, from Texas. Known as something of a maverick and an outsider, Paul has campaigned on a platform of aggressive individual rights and the fundamental destruction of the apparatus of modern American Government. His second placing was something of a surprise, considering the radical nature of his policies, but even more surprising was his choice of theme music at his celebratory after party:
Very few, if any, political candidates had thought to employ the Imperial Theme from Star Wars on their side before.
On the other side of the aisle, President Obama is set to face an uphill battle for re-election, with a struggling economy and high unemployment reflected in his lowly approval rating. With the figures as they are at this moment, no US President has been re-elected with such low poll numbers or with so many people out of work.
Nevertheless, Barack's formidable fund raising and campaigning skills mean he cannot be discounted. Doubly so while his opponents are flirting with nominating Darth Vader as their candidate. Also worth considering is the fervent personal following Obama inspires in people, which manifest itself in many different ways:
The bloke that posted this, 'barackdubs,' has got a million of these!
The billionaire tyrant has taken his horrible cunt qualities - lack of empathy, sociopathic morals, veneration of profit over all other princiapls - and turned them into a multi billion dollar media empire that spans the globe and make the lives of countless people in the public eye thoroughly miserable. He is undoubtedly one of the world's richest and most influential people. Not bad for a bloke who started with one newspaper (left to him by his father) in the global backwater of Adelaide.
Or take me, as another example.
A keen follower of news and current events, I've taken my horrible cunt qualities - vindictiveness, callousness and a hefty serve of schadenfreude - and converted them into a relentless enjoyment of watching that horrible cunt Rupert Murdoch's media empire crumble (at least a little bit). I feel no shame or guilt about doing this, having harboured great fear and loathing towards the billionaire tyrant for as long as I can remember (fear, loathing and plagiarism being still more of my horrible cunt qualities).
It has to be said, though, that I am probably not the only one enjoying this.
There must be millions of us really, around the world, waiting breathlessly for each new revelation about the grotesque behaviour of journalists and editors employed at the newspapers of Mr Murdoch, each seemingly worse than the last. It's a story that could have come straight from one of Murdoch's own tabloids; powerful people abusing doe eyed victims, screaming headlines, shock and scandal, celebrity and money and a gaggle of frenetic journalists pumping the story like wild eyed junkies, racing each other to get the next scoop.
No wonder Murdoch's papers sold so well. His readership has been enjoying this sort of stuff for years!
And the fact that it is the mouldy old bastion of serious journalism and lefty-ism, England's 'The Guardian,' that is turning the screws on Murdoch only adds to the deliciousness of it all.
Things have moved so quickly and unraveled so fast for Murdoch that it is difficult to know exactly where it will all end. Just a few months ago he was so powerful and influential (and entrenched) in the fabric of British life that he was almost a bit like an aging, wizened sun; something everyone there paid attention to each day without ever really noticing. He owned not only the country's largest selling daily newspaper ('The Sun') but also the largest selling Sunday paper ('The News of the World') and the most prestigious (London's 'The Times') as well. In addition to this, approval of his takeover bid of satellite TV channel 'BSkyB' looked to be a mere formality, which would have made him England's foremost broadcaster as well as a newspaperman.
His influence in England, already enormous, looked set to reach new levels of dominance. The only thing left after the 'BSkyB' takeover would have been for Harry Potter to show up and battle him to the death.
And then it all went wrong, big time.
In 2006, it was uncovered that Clive Goodman, a reporter for the 'News of The World' ('NoTW'), had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mail boxes of members of the royal family. He'd done this in collusion with a private investigator hired by the paper and, once this was uncovered, both men were sacked, prosecuted and jailed. While creating waves at the time, this incident was still viewed as fairly minor and was largely glossed over with the usual 'one rogue reporter not representative of our standards' comments from News Corps HQ.
The billionaire tyrant muttered something under his breath, his British newspaper staff went back to their then principal job of destroying Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown and life went pretty much back to normal.
But this scandal was far from over. It continued to percolate away in the background, as other members of the media (chiefly 'The Guardian') dug away at it, slowly uncovering evidence and sources and garnering testimony from a growing number of disgruntled ex News Corp employees (who, what do you know, didn't have much love for Uncle Rupert). All of this background research and effort exploded spectacularly a few weeks ago.
First it was revealed that the phone hacking operations at the 'News of the World' had not been down to 'one rogue reporter' but had, in fact, been standard business practice. An expanding number of celebrities were revealed as having had their phone messages accessed by NoTW staff, several of them (inclusing the actress Sienna Miller) taking News Corp to court and suing for damages. Almost simultaneously, it was also revealed that NoTW had paid corrupt police officers, as well as private investigators, to help them with this hacking operation, sending shockwaves through the British police force.
And before the outrage over this had even died down, an even bigger scandal came to light. 'The Guardian' reported that in 2002 NoTW reporters had accessed the voice mail box of Milly Dowler, a 13 year old school girl who had gone missing at the time. Not only did the reporters hack into her message bank, but they then deleted messages from it, so as to create space for more. Police at the time thought that the girl herself was accessing her messages and so assumed she was still alive somewhere (she was subsequently found murdered).
The horrified public response to this incident is still reverberating in England.
A sweeping tide of disgust and revulsion spewed forth from other media outlets, members of the public, politicians and pundits. Advertisers immediately abandoned the newspaper and some departed News Corp publications altogether. A number of journalists and editors previously employed by the paper have been arrested and appear headed for jail (among them former editor Andy Coulson, until January this year the British Prime Ministers press secretary). The 168 year old paper itself has been closed and it's current staff made redundant.
Of course, Murdoch himself cannot be specifically blamed for any of these incidents. The time has long since passed where Rupert had any hand in the day-to-day running of his newspapers. But what is obvious is that he has created and cultivated a vile mentality within the arms of his corporation. One that rewards brazen success, regardless of how this is achieved, with no recourse to ethical behaviour or thought for the effect the companies reporting has on it's targets.
Once the NoTW scandals had come to light and become a serious problem, Murdoch did become personally involved in handling the crisis. But his efforts to 'fire break' the scandal by shutting the paper and distancing himself from what happened do not appear to be working. As he lops off one head of this snake, another appears in it's place.
This week, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave an interview where he accused both 'The Sun' and the 'The Times' of a relentless campaign of harassment while he was still in Government, including; the now expected phone hacking, spying on his friends and family, illegally accessing his son's medical records and hiring actors to impersonate him so as to gain access to his finance and personal records. It's not difficult to imagine Brown, never a favourite of Murdoch's and so someone who suffered obscenely distorted coverage from his papers, having a good laugh in private after airing his accusations and so adding to his old tormentors grief.
For grief is probably as good a word as any to sum up where Murdoch finds himself now (assuming it is proper to assign a human emotion like 'grief' to an inhuman entity like the billionaire tyrant). One of his best selling papers is closed and favoured associates under arrest or with their reputations in tatters. His remaining British papers are now both tainted and have an ugly smell emanating from them. His 'BSkyB' bid has been officially abandoned and would, in any case, have been held up for years by a now hostile Parliament. Indeed, his former friends at the top of Government now castigate his company daily in the press. There is talk of Murdoch selling his other papers and abandoning the UK altogether. Maybe retreating to America... where the FBI have already commenced an investigation into allegations that Murdoch's US newspapers hacked the phone records of victims of the 9-11 terrorist attack. I'll leave it to you to imagine what will happen to Rupert in America if that is proved to be true, but in my mind it involves burning torches and pitchforks:
'KILL THE MONSTER!'
Hell, I'm ready.
I guess being a horrible cunt has it's disdvantages too.
After one of the more protracted, drawn out, postponed and neverending gestation periods in Australian political history, our carbon tax policy has arrived.
And one of the first things to be thankful for is that the carbon tax has been called just that; 'The Carbon Tax.' For anyone who's thinking 'Well, what the fuck else would they call it?' just cast your mind back to Kevin Rudd's doomed Carbon Trading Scheme, officially called 'The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.' Anyone that wants to track the downhill trajectory of that policy need only start with the name, as horrendous as anything that the language mangling Ruddbot ever came up with.
Moving on from the name to the policy itself proves trickier, due to the complex nature of what has been put forth. Which is nothing short of an attempt to recombobulate and reform Australia's energy sector, manufacturing sector and tax system simultaneously (when a reform of any one of these areas on it's own would normally have been considered epochal).
Paid by the top 500 carbon producing companies, the tax will increase annually to a projected rated of $29 per tonne by 2015. From 2015, the Government plans to replace the tax with a market driven emissions trading system, where the carbon price will 'float' and be set by trade in carbon permits.
THE COSTS
Companies subject to the tax are expected to pass on their costs to consumers. As these companies come from a diverse range of industries - including mining, transport and manufacturing - costs of most goods and services are expected to increase. The average cost increase per household per week is predicted by Treasury to be $9.90 per week, while the tax is expected to raise about $17 billion worth of revenue in it's first year.
THE COMPENSATION
A broad suite of compensation to measures to offset these cost increases. These will be delivered through tax cuts, increases in welfare payments and a set of 'one off' bonus payments to help pensioners and low income households. Average compensation is projected at $10.10 per household per week, costing the Government about $21 billion in the first year of operation.
Now that last sentence is important. As it means that Treasury modelling of the Carbon Tax shows that on average people will be marginally - very marginally - ahead of where they are now.
This from a tax that has been widely posited as the end of civilisation as we know it. The last Revenge of the Green Nerds who - for reasons known only to the Tony Abbott and his supporters on the extreme right - want to destroy modern society. We can see now that they want to do this by giving us a generous package of tax cuts and payments and hoping we all... spend ourselves to death? Which is, you know, devilishly clever (or something).
Which is not to say that there aren't losers from the carbon tax legislation. The compensation measures are on a sliding scale so those at the bottom end of the income scale will do much better than those at the other end. Anyone with kids and earning over $150 000 will be worse off by a few hundred dollars a year, as will single people with no kids on about half that amount (including myself in this last category).
But to speak of losers out of such a package as this one is to overlook a fairly crucial point. And that is: this is a tax that you can avoid, or minimise your exposure too. Even more pointedly, this is a tax the Government wants you to avoid, as much as possible.
For if the carbon tax is to serve any useful purpose at all, then it's primary function will be to alter the way people spend their money. By adding a carbon price to good and industries that are carbon intensive, the hope is that carbon free or reduced alternatives will become cheaper in comparison. And so savvy people who are willing to look for services in low carbon areas will receive not just the Government's compensation, but save themselves money by dodging the tax altogether.
Again, not exactly what you'd expect from a policy who's purported purpose was to return Australia to the Dark Ages.
Not that this could stop the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, from claiming that this was just what it was designed to do. The Action Man's response to the carbon policy was both predictable... and seemingly scripted out about a month before the details of the policy were released, as his comments mostly ignored the specifics of what the Government had just proposed.
The carbon price would 'drive up prices and threaten jobs,' the Opposition leader said. It would 'do nothing at all' to curb emissions while ensuring that 'millions of Australians are worse off.' It was nothing more than 'a tax increase pretending to be an environmental policy' and, as such, would be 'the first time since the 1980s that marginal tax rates have been increased.' He colourfully predicted that the the policy would prove so unpopular with the punters that the Government would suffer 'the death of a thousand cameos,' as regular folk stepped forward to complain about it. He further offered to provide all 1000 said cameos by noon of the following day.
In short, he had plenty of tightly scripted, vaguely general, acutely non specific lines that the waiting media hordes could sample and run as five second grabs as his response throughout the subsequent few days. Typically, for Abbott, he had much less to offer in the way of actual details; whether or not he'd reverse the tax if elected and whether he'd keep the more generous income tax arrangements that accompany it first among these points he was silent on.
And he had nothing whatsoever to say about his own plan to reduce carbon emissions.
Yes, that's right, that previous sentence is not a misprint. Mr No-Taxy Pants is a Global Warming believer himself. And he has his own little scheme to reduce Australia's carbon emissions which he made no reference to during his carbon tax response and which involves spending $3.5 billion dollars of public funds on... tree planting? Burying, er, stuff? No one, including Abbott himself, seems quite sure exactly what his 'Direct Action' plan will entail, nor how he intends to pay for it. It also seems to be fairly certain that we won't find out either of things, until about four minutes before the next election.
In the meantime, then, we are treated to a most unusual sight. Both Government and Opposition engaging in an election campaign with no election due for about two years. Julia Gillard has promised to 'wear out her shoes' while travelling the country to explain the policy (and she has conducted more than 100 interviews since it was released), while The Action Man is never likely to miss out on a chance to roll up his shirt sleeves in public and shout a lot.
This faux campaign will involve much claim and counter claim from both sides, and will suck up all the available political oxygen for the forseeable future. Julia Gillard's has staked her Prime Ministership on this policy and, not to be outdone, The Action Man has doubled down and bet the house too. Expect many colourful charts and ads as they seek to exaggerate the benefits of their respective ideas.
Not to mention many more photos of what is likely to be this debate's enduring image; burly workers in neon vests looking non plussed.
This week marks 12 months since Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister.
To mark the occasion, the 'Herald Sun' in Melbourne had a flash application on their website, which enabled people to rate Julia's performance from A to D in 17 categories, covering aspects of her leadership and performance. A virtual report card of sorts. I went through the exercise, distributing mainly C's, with a few A's and D's thrown in. The results, showing my score and compared with the average of the 'Hun's' readership are shown below:
You may not be shocked to see that they don't rate her very highly. I mean, 'D' in every category!
Now I know this is an exercise conducted by a Newscorp publication and so, as such, should be treated with caution. And the sort of person likely to have done it - 'The biggest crock of shit in the universe' declared 'Megan' of the PM, in an attached article - also needs to be taken into consideration. I mean, for anyone living in Melbourne it would be easy enough to imagine Andrew Bolt sitting in his office, hitting 'D-D-D-D-D-D-D' as he filled in the scorecard twenty thousand times and so skewing the whole exercise to match his own warped view of the universe.
But nevertheless, you can still derive a point from it (and other recent, related, media coverage): Julia Gillard is sinking fast.
In another story on the same day, The Hun had her predecessor and potential successor, Kevin Rudd, pulling a 60% approval rating in a poll they conducted in 12 marginal seats across the country. And easily leading Tony Abbott in a two party preferred contest in those same seats. Julia's comparative performance? Too depressing too consider... unless you are 'Megan' or Andrew Bolt.
The only thing now appearing to stand between Heavy Kevvy and a second coming to the leadership, then, is the extreme loathing that nearly all of his Labor colleagues feel towards him. If any polling were done of the ALP caucus, the likely result would be that they'd rather follow 'The Simpsons' lead:
and install anyone... anything... as leader before they'd consider going back to him again.
Julia, meanwhile, soldiers laboriously on, with everything she touches seemingly turning into a combination nightmare/fist fight. On top of the neverending battle over the Carbon Tax and the NBN and developing stalemate over live cattle exports, she now finds herself under attack from promising to cut taxes and raise family benefits. Normally about as close to a rock solid popular vote winner in this lazy ass country as you can get.
The ALP has indicated that, as part of the Carbon Tax package, they would be offering fairly generous tax cuts and a raise in benefits to offset expected cost increases. Nothing very concrete has been put out in public about what these benefits would entail but a few details are slowly starting to leak out.
Which undoubtedly was what prompted Tony 'Action Man' Abbott to get on the front foot by stating this week that the Liberals would be offering their own generous tax cut package at the next election as well. It probably doesn't need to be said that the Opposition leader also promised that his package would be bigger, more generous and would not be attached to any revenue raising efforts, particularly none that would help save the environment at the same time. And so was much, much better. Save money and do nothing to help the environment? That's gold out in the suburbs!
He said all this, of course, without naming any specific details of his plan, nor indicating how he would pay for it. It is indicative of the current debate, and Julia's troubles, that Abbott's plan was praised while hers was lambasted.
Until she is able to turn the debate back to Abbott, and highlight both the short sightedness and lack of detail in any of his proposals, her troubles look likely to continue. And Kevvy's annoying smirk will only get larger.
The headline on the front page of Saturdays 'Age' was awkward, but made it's point:
'MADAM 31%'
Revealing both that;
a) Prime Minister Julia Gillard's personal approval rating has sunk to a disastrous level and
b) Newspaper copy writers still haven't quite gotten the hang of how to deal with a woman in the top job. I mean, 'Madam 31%'? Come on fellas!
The same report also had Labor's primary vote as 27% and catalogued some of the problems that have beset the Government and lead to such a disastrous, historically low, polling position (they couldn't have printed a comprehensive list of these problems, so extensive are they, and still have left room for any other news).
A short summary of these; Labor's muddled handling of both the asylum seeker and climate change issues, a growing perception that the Government stands for nothing and Gillard's own increasingly ragged performance as leader.
Looked at in conjunction; horrendously low poll numbers and serious problems in both policy and personality terms, the Federal Government appears to be f*cked at this time. While it may be two years or therebaouts to the next election - a long time in other words - the numbers appear to be so bad and Labor's plight so grim that nothing short of a nuclear attack by Indonesia, allowing the Government to sieze unlimited 'emergency powers,' would seem capable of saving it from electoral oblivion.
Things are so bad, in fact, that certain 'unnamed sources' within the Federal ALP appear to be thinking about reactivitating the Ruddbot. Which must have come as news to those others in the Federal ALP who did this to him last year:
'Didn't we kill him? We killed him! WE MELTED HIM DOWN!'
Hell, I guess even Arnie showed up again in 'Terminator 3.'
And, in one sense, I guess you can understand why people would start looking at other, non-Gillard options. I mean, Rudd was cashiered in the first place for leading Labor into a 'disastrous' position in the polls: primary vote of around 35% and dead even, or thereabouts, on the two party preferred. A position, in other words, that today would present a remarkable recovery, assuming Gillard were able to lead her party back to that position.
But, looked at in a different sense, going back to the Ruddbot makes no sense at all and would be, in fact, completely fucking barmy. I mean this is the guy who turned the comfortable electoral victory and buffer in 2007 into the mind bending policy/personality crisis that Labor are suffering from at the moment in the first place.
All of the major policy problems that are afflicting Labor at the moment; a convoluted approach to refugees, increasingly desperate policy on carbon pricing and accusations of waste and inefficiency in Government spending, all started on Rudd's watch. His predecessor has simply lacked the ability to come up with credible alternatives and reverse course.
And this is to say nothing of Rudd's personality and management stylings, which were somewhere between Ivan the Terrible and Chairman Mao on a bad brain day. To say that he was unloved by his cabinet colleagues (as well as wait staff around the country) is to put it mildly.
All of which leaves the ALP in the shit house federally, stuck between a current leader who appears to alienate the electorate more every time she opens her mouth, and a previous leader who most of them can't stand to be in the same room with. And all the time, those poll numbers steadily getting worse.
Which makes things interesting for Tony 'Action Man' Abbott, who would certainly win an election if held now but who appears to be resigned to being stuck in a holding pattern for the next two years. And two years is a long time for someone like The Action Man to hold himself together.... and a very long time for Abbott's colleagues to fret that he won't be able to.
For the only thing appearing to stand between the Liberal Party and a return to Government, apart from the passage of time, is that their leader will have some sort of fatal meltdown. You know the sort of thing; suddenly give that famous death stare of his to a little kid who accidentally bumps into him in a shopping centre, or suddenly declaring on Radio National that all unwed mothers should be placed in some sort of work camp system.
Unlikely perhaps, but not totally beyond the realms of possibility (based on previous form). And it is this one factor alone that the Labor Party faithful (all 14 of them) will be clinging to during this dark time. That Abbott may blow up and thusly resurrect their fortunes.
The Opposition Leader, oddly, then finds himself in much the same position as Kevin Rudd was after that famous victory in 2007. And viewed in much the same way by his opponents. Despite the current poll numbers, they have fingers crossed his well known character flaws may yet do for him in the end.
As everyone in the world is probably aware, Barack and Michelle Obama, President and First Lady of the United States, recently went to the UK and Ireland for a six day visit. And while it wasn't the first time they'd been there... and there was no specific reason for the visit... and nothing of any real substance was debated or decided... nevertheless, I think everyone in the world was in agreement that the whole thing was THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER! At least since Kate and Wills rushed off to the church so they could get married before Kate announced she's preggers. Oh ho! Did I actually say that part out loud? I've said too much!
But more on that another time. For now, pictorial highlights of the Obama's abroad:
HAIR
The gravity of the Obama's mission to the UK was established early, with earnest discussion, analysis and many pictures of Michelle Obama's hair BLOWING IN THE WIND as she stepped off of Air Force One. Dylan was right, the answer my friend, really is...
CURLING
The Obama's first stop was in Ireland, where one of the locals was generous enough to give Barack a curling stick as a present. From the look in his eye, he appears to be thinking about using it on one of his Repuiblican opponents... or anyone who says he was actually born in Kenya.
T-SHIRTS
Of course, the Irish were pretty excited to find out that Barack was actually an Irishman himself, as his Great Grandfather on his mother's side hailed from there. This guaranteed Barack a warm welcome in the country, and guaranteed that many fine t-shirts, commemorating the fact, would be produced. This one - 'BIFFO: Barrack is from Feckin Offaly' - just one among many.
COUPLE OF DRINKS
And like any Irishman, Barack is a man who enjoys a drink... or two... of twenty... So I says, Yeah! You want that money, come and find it, coz I don't know where it is you baloney! You make me wanna... retch.
CROWDS
The Obama's then moved onto England, where the President demonstrated his unprecedented pulling power with the European crowds was undiminished. I mean, George W. Bush used to pull crowds this size, but they were mainly young people there to set off smoke bombs and fight with the riot police, so it wasn't quite the same.
THE QUEEN
The Obama's would have an audience with the Queen which provided an opportunity for many photos of the world's most powerful man grinning like a nervous schoolboy, while the assembled press waited with bated breath to see if the bloke on the right would say anything about 'darkies' or 'coons.'
NAPKIN
BARACK: What do you call this thing again?
THE QUEEN: A napkin.
BARACK: Outrageous!
BBQ
The Obama's would also spend some time with the Camerons, David and Samantha, Prime Minister and... ummm... wife?... of England. For the chaps, this gave them an excellant opportunity to do one of those things that male politicians love best: getting down to their shirt sleeves and pretending to be like regular folk. Here barbecuing for some military cadets at the back of the PM's residence...
TABLE TENNIS
... and here playing table tennis at a local school. Eye of the Tiger Barack!
MICHELLE O. VERSUS SAM CAM
Looking either really friendly or like they're about to punch on, the First Lady and the... errr... Wife of the PM? Go toe to toe outside Number 10 Downing Street.
WASHING THE CAR
And here's a photo of some underling washing the Obama's car... Did I tell you I was a bit obsessed with them? Barack Obama! Barack Obama! Barack Obama! Speaking of the Obama mobile - sometimes referred to as 'The Beast' - here is the undoubted highlight of the Obama's trip:
Even for the coolest couple in the world, not everything goes to plan.
There are times you can tell that the fates are conspiring against you.
For example, if you're me, and you're on your way to work, and the tram that takes you to the train is late and then, when you get to the train station, you find that the train is cancelled anyway, and then, when you go to get a plain sausage McMuffin from McDonalds while you kill time waiting for the next one and they give you that horrible, plastic egg in your muffin as well as a sausage patty... well, you can tell that fate is out to get you (This scenario happens to me most days, actually, so it's lucky I'm stoic.
Or, to take another example, if you're the Prime Minister, and you're leading a flimsy minoirty Government, and your populist opponent is getting a free ride form the press, and all of your policies are about as popular as Hitler with plague, and you're facing rock bottom jump out the window, numbers in the polls and then... and then!... the way you put your footy tips in for a newspaper comp generates controversy, then you probably know the fates are against you too.
And this is what happened to our own hapless PM, Julia Gillard, last weekend .
Ms Gillard, as most people would know, is a pretty keen footy fan and the number one ticket holder of the club that shall be known here as Footscray. Here's a picture of the PM with out on the ground with the Doggies full forward Barry Hall (in a happier moment for both):
Now like a lot of footy fans, the PM is in a few tipping comps, at least two of which are in large daily newspapers; the 'Herald Sun' in Melbourne and the 'West Australian' in Perth. The mini scandal - 'TipGate!' - that enveloped her today sprung out of the fact that, when Footscray played West Coast in the last round of the AFL, the PM appeared to tip the Dogs in the Victorian paper, while tipping the Eagles, the home team, in the 'West Aussie,' and so appeared to be trying to curry favour with fans of both clubs:
Her opponents had a field day.
'Loyalty to your team even in bad times is a test of character,' Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop hooted, scarcely able to contain her glee. 'With Julia Gillard, self interest trumps loyalty every time.'
Sadly for all of us interested in politics, worn out as we are by months of bickering about the blasted carbon tax, no sooner had this mini scandal reared it's head, then it was quashed again. For someone in the PM's office immediately let it be known that Julia had forgotten to put her tips in to the 'West Australian.' The paper then confirmed that when this happens, as sometimes does with busy celebrity tipsters, the paper automatically puts that person down for the favourite in each game (West Coast in the game in question).
Scandal averted.
Nevertheless, the situation did place the PM in a situation, castigated as she often is by Tony 'Action Man' Abbott as being out of touch with the regular punters, that many of them could relate to. That is, who do you tip when you barrack for a team that's a bit shit and who are playing a good side? Put this question any follower of a team that's a bit shit and you'll probably get the following response:
'Fuck off, you back your boys in!'
Which is a mentality that the PM, castigated as she often is by the Action Man for being a bit wishy washy as well, would do well to adopt.
