Skip to main content

Ron says so long to John......

Ron Quantock has concluded that PM John Howard will lose the upcoming election.....and has penned a fond farewell to him:

"I think we can say with some confidence that Election 2007 is already decided. Soon Kevin07 will become Kevin0dear and John Howard will be but a self-funded retiree.

Australia08 will be different. There won't be the same intensity in political life. The more grotesque and brutal achievements of the past 11 years will be patched and painted over. And that's a pity because comedy depends on suffering. The more the merrier.

In a perfect world, a world without suffering, there would be no need for comedy. In a perfect world people would be perfectly happy. It follows — and I'm sorry if it doesn't, but I learned logic from Andrew Bolt — it follows that in a world of infinite, unrelenting suffering, comedians could command quite a premium.

One more term and Howard might just have legislated that world of infinite, unrelenting suffering into being. But he has legislated his last and we might have to wait for Tony Abbott to finish the job.

For now we can only guess at the comic possibilities of a fifth term and give thanks for what morsels of misery he let drop for the nation's comic imagination to feed on. We shall not see his like again — until Tony Abbott in 0mygod.

I am grateful for the opportunities the Howard Imperium has provided: it would churlish of me not to acknowledge my debt before he evaporates from public life. I penned the following personal tribute to The Rt Hon. (see it's funny already) John Winston Howard for the record."

Read on, here, for the "personal tribute".

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland