Bennelong pays out :)

The former PM concedes his seat to Maxine. Australia becomes a better place.
Pic from smh.com.au

Date	Description	Wagered
05/09/2007 04:28	Single O/0095416/0000001, Accepted , Decided Bennelong (NSW), MCKEW, Ma... @ 2.40 (To Win) Paid: 11.38	AUD 4.74

Scott wins on The Rodent's defeat. Beers on me tomorrow. Enjoy oblivion, Mr Howard.

Keating's post election spray

Divisive leader who squandered Australia's hopes

Paul Keating
November 26, 2007

On Saturday night, when it was clear the Howard Government had been defeated, many Labor supporters around me said: "You must be so happy." But my emotion was not happiness; rather, it was relief.

Relief that the nation had put itself back on course. Relief that the toxicity of the Liberal social agenda - the active disparagement of particular classes and groups, that feeling of alienation in your own country - was over. And over in the only way that could be final: with a resounding electoral instruction of "No more".

Read the whole article here.

Murali is last hope for Wallaby wannabe.

Mike Ticher
Friday October 26, 2007

Guardian

Don Bradman was a total bastard, a grumpy, greedy tight-arse, who could not even score one run the last time he played.

This is not my view but that of a satirical TV programme that recently made headlines here in Australia with those lyrics in a song suggesting various dead celebrities were not quite the "top blokes" portrayed in their eulogies.

Bradman is the ultimate sporting hero of our prime minister, John Howard, who identifies as much with the buttoned-up style of the hypochondriac Adelaide stockbroker as with his cricketing achievements. In the middle of an election campaign, which Howard seems certain to lose, he has found time to announce funding of A$6.5m (£2.9m) for the museum dedicated to Bradman in his home town of Bowral - which is not even in a marginal seat.

So he took great offence at the description of Bradman, calling it "distasteful and despicable". Perhaps it was not just the part about being a grumpy, greedy tight-arse Howard hated so much but the reference to Bradman's duck in his last Test innings, since more than one commentator has suggested Howard's own career may be about to end in a similar deflating way.

If it does, international sport will lose one of its all-time great coat-tail grabbers and shameless opportunists, not to mention the worst bowler in the history of photo opportunities. Howard unwisely put his cricketing abilities on display when visiting Kashmir in 2005. As readers of the Clip joint on this page yesterday will know, his first ball, delivered with an unconvincing off-spinner's action, failed to reach - let alone trouble - the unimpressed local batsman. Worse, after he lets go, it trickles towards an onlooker at silly mid-off. From about a metre away he chucks back the ball, which Howard drops.

Undaunted by his incompetence, the PM has appeared at every possible sporting occasion in his 11 years in office, easily surpassing Tony Blair as a statesman capable of surfing on any national triumph and souring any setback. When England won the Rugby World Cup in Sydney four years ago, Howard stomped down the victors' line all but throwing the medals at them, in a performance that led armies of compatriots to write to the papers complaining of his "lemon-sucking grimace", "worthy of any discontented five-year-old at a birthday party".

Not that such ringing endorsements have prevented him donning national sporting garb at all times, above all the Wallabies tracksuits that adorn his daily pre-breakfast power walk. So iconic has the Howard style become that it recently forced a startling change of policy on the Chinese government through what can best be described as tracksuit diplomacy. When the premier, Wen Jiabao, went walking with Howard in Canberra last year he was humiliated by the contrast between his plain outfit and Howard's sparkling Melbourne Commonwealth Games get-up. Wen's advisers have since kitted him out in Beijing Olympics gear for his jogging commitments on a tour of Europe.

Howard's application of clunky cricket analogies to politics is as elegant as his bowling action. In the last election he claimed at one point his Liberal Party was "three for about 268 [in the campaign] but the right-hand opener is still there." This time it needs several hundred to avoid the follow-on, and is wishing it had dropped the right-hand opener before the series started.

Howard is struggling to turn round ominous opinion polls, secure a fifth straight election victory and, most importantly, make sure he will still have the use of his personal RAAF plane to take him to and from the Boxing Day Test at the MCG (cost to the taxpayer last year a mere £5,700). He needs a distraction, a circuit-breaker such as the Tampa refugee crisis he exploited so successfully in the 2001 election. And at this desperate late stage there can be only one contender for the sports-mad PM: Muttiah Muralitharan.

Murali has two Tests before the election in which to snare the nine wickets he needs to overhaul Shane Warne as the leading Test wicket-taker. Howard has form. The last time Sri Lanka visited, in 2004, he was instrumental in Murali's refusal to tour, when he branded the spinner a chucker with the words: "They proved it in Perth too, with that thing." That thing, to be more technical, was the biomechanics test that showed Murali straightened his arm to an extent that was then illegal when bowling the doosra.

Howard might have to bend the truth by only about, say, 14 degrees, to whip up a wave of anti-Murali sentiment. It is an edgy time. The visitors have already had anxious meetings about likely crowd reactions, and plain-clothes police are to be deployed inconspicuously (presumably dressed in body paint and watermelon helmets) to weed out the kind of troublemakers who have targeted Murali in the past.

If Howard could only harness that sentiment, then hold up Warne as the iconic national figure who represents everything good about Australia . . . no, you're right, he's a goner.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Howard under pressure after poll setback

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 18 September 2007

John Howard, the embattled Australian Prime Minister, was under intense pressure to consider his future last night as opinion polls predicted a crushing defeat for his conservative coalition in the forthcoming election. Mr Howard is the country's second-longest-serving premier, with four election victories under his belt over the past 11 years. But the polls and the public mood indicate that Australians have had enough of him.

For the full story, click here.

You goin down, Johnny

I just remembered that I had an account with Centrebet. Logged on, and with the AUD 4.74 I had available to play with I bet that Maxine McKew will win Bennelong. With odds currently of 7/5, I stand to collect $11.37 on election day.

The Rodent has still got the edge with the bookies. He'd pay$7.11 for the same stake.

On the couch at John and Janette's

On the couch at John and Janette's

Danny Katz

July 26, 2007

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/25/1185339075976.html

Ha ha Peter Costello you didn't get invited round to John Howard's place for a private dinner and just about EVERYBODY'S been invited round to John Howard's place for a private dinner: Tony Abbott and his wife, Bronwyn Bishop and his wife, Andrew Peacock and his wives, Mel and Kochie, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Wolfmother, ol' Sprocko from the mail room ...

Even I've been invited round to John Howard's place for a private dinner AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW THE GUY - he just called out of the blue a couple of weeks back, said "Hey, whatya doing Friday night?" and I said, "Well Mr Prime Minister, we were hoping to stay in, watch Ghost Rider on DVD, see if Nicholas Cage is still keeping his hair." John Howard said "Nah, come round for dinner with your wife, I'll be on drinks duty, and Janette'll whip up a batch of her tangy beetroot dip. It'll be fun!" So we wound up going, because John's pushy like that - he even promised to pull the troops out of Iraq for me, and deport Catriona Rowntree.

We showed up at 6, and John answered the door in his green and gold tracksuit, with a pair of Grosby shoes in pastel-grey, for that smooth-slammin' hustler-boi look. And Janette was beside him in a very smart skirt and jacket ensemble, made of quality terry-towelling with low-piling properties. They led us into the house: nice place but the walls are all covered in furry '70s wallpaper - you rub against it, you stick like Velcro.

We sat in the living room: John dimmed the lights, put on some Getz/Gilberto - a laid-back Latin version of On the Road to Gundagai. Then Janette offered us pre-dinner nibbles: chicken chickadees. My wife said "Wow, I haven't had these since I was a little kid. Are they in the shops again?" and Janette said "No, this is just an old packet I found in the pantry." Meantime, John had popped behind his fake bamboo tiki lounge in the corner; "What's your poison, patrons?" he yelled, "We've got a 4-litre cask of Lindeman's Moselle, or pink Spumante." We all went for the moselle and started chatting: John told a funny story about Dr Mahathir at an APEC party covering the toilet seats with clingwrap. And Janette got quite emotional over the plight of black infants in modern Australia, specifically the ones in the Allens Jellybabies - they were always left uneaten and unloved, and it made her feel angry and hopeless.

John jumped up and said, "It's chow-o'clock!" so we sat in front of the TV, with little Albert Namatjira TV-trays on our laps - I think they might've been real Namatjiras. And we ate dinner while we watched Big Brother Friday Night Games, it's Janette's favourite, though she said she can't stand Bodie. We dined on cheesy pineapple bake, pineapple salmon log and Hawaiian ham steaks, and right in the middle of the meal, John leaned across to me and said, "Tell me, why do you think I'm so out of touch with Australian voters?" and I said "It's a real mystery John - hey pass another ham-steak, with extra pineapple, please!" John sighed, shook his head, told me how much he hated Kevin Rudd: "Never trust a man who smiles when he talks," he said, "just like that Adam Hills and Liberace."

After a dessert of custard trifle (with pineapple pieces), John was looking a little tipsy: he'd moved onto Sambucas with flaming coffee beans, and had to drink it from the side of his mouth so he didn't singe his eyebrows. He yelled "Party games!", then we sat in a circle and played political charades (Janette won with her impression of Joe Hockey climbing out of a spa-bath). We also gathered around the piano and sang ribald songs (John did a hilarious improvised verse of The Good Ship Venus about a first mate named Costello, an eggplant and a labradoodle). And we finished with a bit of Clinker-divination; you ask the Clinker a question, then bite into it, and if you get a green one, the answer is yes, pink no, yellow maybe. John went first: he said, "Am I an outdated remnant of a faded Australia who's time as Prime Minister has come to an end?" then he bit into the Clinker and I don't know what he got but he went a little quiet after that, lost interest in the dinner party and disappeared into the computer room to update his MySpace page. Janette just plonked herself on the Jason Recliner and watched Big Brother Up Late and we made our own way out.

So Peter, you're not missing anything, believe me. You'd be better off at home, enjoying some Vietnamese takeaway, and a DVD of Howards End.

jhdj

The potential tragedy for John Howard

By Michael Field:

"To understand why John Howard could become a figure of tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, his life story needs to be understood. The Liberal Party has been John Howard’s life. He joined the party about the time of his eighteenth birthday in 1957, and so he will have his 50th anniversary this year. The best indication of his commitment and that of his mother was an action taken by them in 1968 when he was still living at home. Howard was endorsed as the candidate for the state seat of Drummoyne. In order to enhance his chances, his mother sold the family home in Earlwood and rented a house with him at Five Dock, a suburb within the electorate. When his bid failed, John Howard and his mother returned to Earlwood, moving together to a house in the very same street that he grew up in.........."

Read the full article on Tasmanian Times

Keating: Costello is "all tip and no iceberg", Howard....

....a "Dessicated Coconut". Read the story here.

Bring the man back. Please.....