rats leaving the sinking ship in the Land of the Long Weekend

Comrades,

If the Pinko's think that the next election is a fait accompli then they better watch out for rats in the ranks, of which they have a very long and dirty history. You just never know where they are in the woodwork.

Of course, one they don't have to worry about is PM ScoMo's latest best buddy Warren Mundine - a rattus rattus of long standing - having quit the ALP Presidency, and then the party altogether to become chief of the Mad Monk's ill-fated and toothless Indigenous Advisory Council, that never appeared to do anything at all, and was abolished a year ago. So it was only a matter of time until Mundine fell into the clasping clutches of the Tories as their candidate in the seat of Gilmore, the most marginal Lib-Nat seat in all of NSW. Great idea. Parachute in a Pinko turncoat, against the vote of the local Tory caucus who'd already endorsed a local real estate agent. Good one ScoMo, taking a leaf out of Mad Tony's playbook and making a Captain's Call par excellence [wasn't the Aberrant Abbott's last master stroke giving one of those short-lived and now rare Australian Knighthoods to Phil The Greek?] As some rabid Pinko in an uncharitable mood said to me mid-week, Mundine, "like much of his family", is a "self-aggrandizing self-promoter". He is, after all, an uncle of that well known loud-mouth Anthony "Choc" Mundine; not that you should suffer guilt by association with yr family or anything like that. Oh no. Not by any means. But the skipper's pick remains shrouded in mystery.

As he chugged on beers and stuffed endless sausage sangers into his gobhole under a red, white and blue bucket hat, ScoMo had a great Straaayaaa Day Long Weekend as all of a sudden no less than three Ministers of the Crown cashed in their chips, deciding they had better things to do with their lives like "spend time with the family". Really? They could all see that dreadful day of judgement coming from a long way off, and having got well used to lording over their respective Departments, did not fancy the idea of returning to Opposition and sniping from the sidelines. The Minister for the Poor, Sick, Weak, Old, Halt and Lame, the Minister for the Unemployed and Dead-Beat Layabouts, and the Minister for the Aborigines are all now fed up to here and have left our Glorious Leader to fend for himself. Rats, alright. Soon there will be no one on the front bench left to quit in a fit of pique. In the wake of the Mundine call, it's ironic that the gun-toting former mackerel fisherman and Country-Liberal Party Senator for the Northern Territory, Nigel Scullion, hung on to the Indigenous Affairs portfolio through no less than three Prime Ministers, simply because nobody else wanted that particular poisoned chalice. Anyone want it now? Nigel doesn't.

Never mind public image or anything so superficial; the Govt. is literally falling apart - its shit stinks so much that the rats are leaving the sinking ship, while another notable rodent backs the wrong horse and jumps on board. Go figure?

If all that wasn't bad enough for the ruling classes, it was pleasing to hear Zali Stegall referred to in the press as a "barrister and former Olympian" [Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano, Salt Lake City] when she made clear her intention of making an independent run for Warringah, voluntarily putting herself forward to head up the well-established "Get Tony" ticket on Facebook. All power to her oars. In the current mood, the electorate has had more than enough of Half-Term Tony. The world has passed you, and yr budgie smugglers, by, son. At long last, all washed up on Manly Beach at age 61 come May.

I was once again mortified at being so rudely brushed for Straya Day honours yet again this year; it hurts, and let's face it, what more do they want me to do? And there was also something quietly disturbing about Olivia Neutron-Bomb effectively being made a Dame of the Realm, as the Companion of the Order of Straya is generally regarded as the colonial equivalent of a knighthood/damehood, while Our Kylie (Minogue) was only made an Officer of the Order at age 50 to add to her 2007 OBE. Cruelly snubbed, she was. To be fair, tho', both could also mount good cases for being appointed joint Strayans of the Year. [Just please don't get me started on Peter Reith and Warren Truss, OK?]

In any case, all this nonsense will come to an end soon enough when King Charles the Turd assumes the Throne and Crown and they "change the date" from January 26 to January 1 [which I have always advocated as Australia's National Day, being the date of Federation in 1901 and a celebration of the Miracle of Democracy]. That way you can have two public holidays at New Year, the 1st & 2nd, then you could roll the old Straya Day, Anzac Day and the Queen's Birthday into Easter for an enormous, huge, massive, tremendous, bloody bewdiful Mighty Mega Long Weekend - no less than five public holidays in a row to celebrate the world renowned and undisputed luckiness of the Land of the Long Weekend. Put that to a vote and see it romp home. You know it makes sense.

a pure unashamed Fascist agenda

Comrades,

You may have got a robo-text from the former Honourable Member for Fairfax, Clive Palmer, or seen one or two of his billboards recently, ahead of the upcoming Federal Election. But the burning question is - where did he get the $50M quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald to fund his "election war chest"? I thought the wack-job was bankrupt, and didn't have two burnt-out model dinosaurs to rub together? Did not Queensland Nickel go down the S-bend, with the loss of hundreds of jobs, and then he wrote it off as a tax loss? His Coolum golf course lies in ruins, abandoned. And that's just the start of it. He's being sued left, right and centre, and he must owe his lawyers millions, as he's also a well known vexatious litigant. He hasn't appeared on the Forbes Rich List since 2014. What makes him think anyone would care two shits about him nowadays? What's in it for him anyway? The Palmer United Party was de-registered in 2017, but he suddenly took an renewed-interest in politics for reasons unknown again last year, re-registering the schemozzle as the United Australia party and threatening to run candides in all 151 seats. So just who is the puppet-master pulling the strings here?

He's most likely turned to the randomly generated text caper and "outdoor", because his social media is utterly hopeless and incoherent. His Twitter account is unintelligible, and he modestly describes himself as a "National Living Treasure". I kid you not...

His Twitter account says he has 80K followers which would ordinarily qualify him as an "influencer" - but how many Twitter bots has be bought? You can purchase fake Twitter followers in bulk for less than ten cents each. He's got 198,840 alleged "likes" on Facebook - same story - but here's the real deal - the great steaming turd has got a grand total of 774 followers on Instagram - the true arbiter of all things important in the Brave New World. And his Instagram account - where air brushing and perfect photo filtering is de rigueur - makes Clive's effort look truly bizarre. If anyone can work out what the hell this is all about, please tell me...

All that aside, it seems the obese demented buffoon is running a pure unashamed Fascist agenda. And why not, when right wing popularism is on the rise world wide? Let's build those very fast trains and run them precisely to timetable just like My Mate Mussolini did, lower land prices will be achieved by expelling all the Muslims and Chinese and offering cheap housing blocks east of Marble bar, and reducing traffic congestion is a simple one - send every old car to the wreckers, with only The Authorities allowed to drive around in swanky vehicles.

Saw this one on the New Canterbury Road in Hurlstone Park the other day; poor choice of location, Clive - the workers on that building site next door have ladders a plenty. And spray cans. Go you good Pinko's...

In the interim, the interesting times that lay ahead are barely warming up in mid-January, with good ol' Uncle Bill emulating the PM by taking the Pinko Bus on a whirlwind tour of the "battleground state" Queensland, while ScoMo last week took a Grand Tour of South Pacific nations to shore up Australia as the 'friend of choice' in the face of "creeping Chinese influence", dropping in on Fiji and Vanuatu. The main talking point in Fiji was some terrorista banged up forever in a Turkish jail who'd just had his Australian passport marked CANCELLED, but he also claims to have dual Fijian citizenship, but the Fijians said they knew nothing about it, cared less, and they weren't expecting the bloke to turn up under the swaying palms on their sandy beaches anytime soon. Your problem, not ours.

A serving Australian PM has not visited Vanuatu since Bob Hawke 19 years ago, but ScoMo - God bless him - made the best decision of his Premiership by announcing in Port Vila that he plans to abolish the current 2kg restriction on the importation of Kava for personal use. It's now it's gonna be open slather. As Our Glorious Leader says, two kilograms is barely enough for "a family gathering in Western Sydney". ScoMo said the decision was made because "the issue is very important to Vanuatu". Der. Of course it is, as Vanuatu is the world's leading exporter of Kava, and for the connoisseur, the debate about whether the best Kava comes from the island of Tanna or from Pentecost will continue for all eternity, as sugar bags of the stuff turn up on the next boat and pile up on the wharves. Oh, to have a nakamal just around the corner. Tax breaks for Kava bars would be a huge vote winner among the Melanesian diasapora. Remember that, ScoMo.

I wonder what the Bislama phrase is for Total Wally: "im belong dikhed"?

how to lose $US145 million selling weed

Comrades,

At the Mid-Term elections back in November, the good burghers of three of the Great States of the US of A voted to decriminalise/legalise in one way or another that time-honoured cure-all - wacky tabaccy...[North Dakota voted down the concept of totally unregulated open slather], bringing to ten the number of states [plus D.C.] where it's now OK, man, to light up a lazy scoob without coming to the attention of the authorities.  

But, here's an object lesson. How to lose $US145 million in just six months selling weed. Astonishing at first glance, but hey, there was no "boom!". The laws of supply and demand are pretty simple Economics 101 and the last thing the neo-capitalist wants is a saturated market. Folks forget c.sativa and c.indica is not for everyone. Surely they could've employed people who can see the unforeseen consequences? They're called policy/market analysts, aren't they...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/opinion/apple-revenue-china-innovation.html

[Never mind reaching "Peak Tech", you gotta chuckle at the rather naïve reference to the kind of coolness of "rental scooters" even if they are a derivative of the rent-a-car business, when everyone who's ever been to SE Asia in the past 40 years has ridden a step-thru or gone pillion on a motorbike for a small fee, choofing some Buddah Stick along their merry way; it was happening on the Hippie Trail long long before the advent of even the most primitive of mobile phones. Strangely enough, it is still possible to live a perfectly normal life without Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, Tinder or Spotify].

You would have thought the market for rec. gear is fairly stable with negligible demand growth, as old pot heads begin to drop off the twig, and not enough millennials taking up the bucket bong to replace them...gawd save us, even teetotallin' "start-ups" are all the rage...


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/inside-the-new-sobriety-start-ups-shaking-the-12-step-model/10671650


And there's no mention of the black market, which will always undercut the legal market by definition. A large proportion of otherwise law-abiding midnight tokers might be more than happy to stay with their long-time reliable supplier, for cheaper. How many people really want very expensive 100% potent Super Skunk in their mull bowl anyway, when the finest black Afghani hashish is unavailable through legit channels? There are more shysters in the legal caper anyway, trying to sell you CBD, which back in the day used to be called "old rope". Now they want you to pay an arm and a leg for the privilege of rubbing it on yr haemorrhoids while reducing yr anxiety about them at the same time.

Blaming lack of supply is a fine excuse, when just up the road in Oregon there's a major league pot glut; so many people have got into it in the ideal climate there with fanciful ideas of turning a quick buck that they have so much farmed outdoor crop they can't even sell it by the bale full. In fact, they've got truckloads of the shit they can't move at any price - it's all but given away at the fire-sale auctions. Pulling it closer to home - in certain areas of Sydney, there is a lot more money to be made in the unlawful sale of smuggled cheap Chinese cigarettes than there is in common or garden weed. And, like any of the other Fast Moving Consumer Goods [FMCG], it's perishable. Transporting the herbe superbe across state lines is strictly prohibited and while dodging the border wouldn't be hard, that's a federal offence. Profit, if any, can't be banked or moved either. Yr much better off in the sales tax game. Back to square one. "Desperate people do desperate things"...


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/09/how-oregon-grew-too-much-marijuana-to-sell


So what exactly is the "next big thing", Fawlty? Very good question. Landing a man on the Dark Side of the Moon? Or as Buzz Aldrin likes to say..."get yr ass to Mars!"?

Gonna start a new craze..."who knows what tomorrow's gonna bring?"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KenwZYMgu28

CRAZY CRAVES TOP 100 OBITUARIES 2018

Survivors,

It's that time of year again!

This is a bit outside the bailiwick of this bloggy-blog-blog, but there are nine elected politicians, a couple of statesmen, as well as the odd royal, aristocrat and freedom fighter who made contributions to the Miracle of Democracy who are among the departed.

As a nod to the steady marking of time, for yonks I used to publish Crazy Craves Top 20 Obituaries, but I got tired of it with people saying "why'd ya put him in? why'd ya leave her out?" so I set the editor's pen aside a few years ago and pushed the boat right out with a list of 100 deaduns, arranged in chronological order. Spending a lazy Saturday morning over a slow read of the obituaries in the paper with a glass of cheeky Chablis in hand is pretty much perfect, for mine. Why this lifelong fascination? I am entirely unable to tell you.

In any case, all this bell-tolling is highly subjective and idiosyncratic - these people [and four animals] may or may not in one way or another have had an influence on my life, may or may not have been famous or important folks, may just have led interesting or even very dull lives, or the date, place, manner and cause of death, may have been somewhat peculiar.
Or, all four.

That's the criteria for these simple mentions...so I give you...



CRAZY CRAVES TOP 100 OBITUARIES 2018

† January †

John Young, 87, January 5, Houston, Texas. American astronaut, aeronautical engineer, US Navy test pilot, Korean War veteran. First person to have flown to space six times, twice to the moon. Drove 26km in the Lunar Rover and collected 96kg of moon rocks [Apollo 16, 1972]. First flew to space on Gemini 3 [1965] and retired after 42 years at NASA with the first and ninth Space Shuttle flights. Awarded Distinguished Flying Cross. Pneumonia.

Tandberg aka Ron Tandberg, 74, January 8, Geelong, Victoria. Australian artist, designer, political and social cartoonist. Drew "pocket" cartoons for Melbourne's The Age newspaper for 45 years until his death. 11 Walkley Awards, including two gold. Esophageal cancer.

Dolores O’Riordan, 46, January 15, London. Lead singer of Irish pop group The Cranberries, selling more than 40 million records in the early 1990's, surpassed only by U2 in Irish pop. Accidental death. Drowned in London hotel bathtub after passing out due to alcohol intoxication.

Peter Mayle, 78, January 18, Ménerbes, France. British French-resident novelist and newspaper columnist. Author of A Year in Provence [1990] selling six million copies in 30+ languages. Chevalier Legion d'Honneur [2002]. Brief illness.

Paul Bocuse, 91, January 20, Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, France. French chef, restaurateur, author. Inventor of nouvelle cuisine [late 1960's] which he later disowned. Widely regarded as the first "celebrity chef" of the modern era. Commanduer Legion d'Honneur [1975]. Parkinson's disease.

Graeme "Changa" Langlands MBE, 76, January 21, Sydney. Australian rugby league footballer, legend, and "Immortal" of Rugby League Hall of Fame. Played 45 test matches for Australia including 15 as Captain. One of the greatest full backs and centre utility players of all time, appearing in 227 games for St. George [1963-76], including four Premierships. Alzheimer's disease.

Mark E. Smith, 60, January 24, Prestwich, England. English musician and notorious front-man of post-punk band, The Fall. Only consistent member of the group which featured 60+ musicians over 40 years. Boasted a "difficult" and outrageous persona. Three times married and divorced. Complications of respiratory diseases and chronic alcoholism.

Ingvar Kamprad, 91, January 27, Älmhult, Sweden. Swedish entrepreneur, founder of IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer. World's 8th richest man at time of death with net worth estimated at $US58.7 billion. Accused of being Nazi sympathiser during WWII, life-long self-admitted alcoholic known for his monastic frugality. Pneumonia, old age.

Ron Walker AC CBE, 78, January 30, Melbourne. Australian politician, property developer, entrepreneur, sports promoter, philanthropist, socialite. Liberal Party Lord Mayor of Melbourne [1974-76]. Chairman Melbourne Major Events Co. Best known for 'stealing' the Australian Formula One Grand Prix from Adelaide, now staged at Melbourne's Albert Park [1993-present]. Metastasised melanoma.


† February †

Fidel "Fidelito" Castro Díaz-Balart, 68, February 1, Havana, Cuba. Cuban nuclear physicist and eldest son of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In charge of Cuba's nuclear power program until falling out with his father. Later restored as scientific advisor to the Cuban Government until his death. Suicide while being treated in hospital for chronic melancholic depression.

Jarrod Bannister, 33, February 8, Netherlands. Australian Olympian [Beijing 2008]. Current Australian record holder in Javelin. Banned for 20 months [2013-14] for evading three drug tests. Suicide.

Sir Nicholas Shehadie AC KBE OBE, 92, February 11, Sydney. Former Australian rugby union captain playing 30 tests for the Wallabies. Independent Lord Mayor of Sydney [1973-75]. Chairman Special Broadcasting Service [1981]. Chairman Sydney Cricket Ground Trust [1990-2001]. 61 years married to Prof. Marie Bashir, former Governor of New South Wales [2001-14]. Old age.

Morgan Tsvangirai, 65, February 14, Johannesburg, South Africa. Zimbabwean politician, former long time-opposition leader against dictator Robert Mugabe. Survived but lost three violent rigged elections, numerous assassination plots, twice dodged jail on trumped up charges, appointed Zimbabwe Prime Minister [2008-2013] in what turned out to be cosy power sharing arrangement with Mugabe based on privilege. 20 years leader of the Movement for Democratic Change until his death. Colon cancer.

Henri Marie Jean Andre de Laborde de Monpezat, The Prince Henrik, 83, February 14, Copenhagen, Denmark. French-born Danish prince and Royal Consort. Poet, author, sculptor, gourmand and winemaker. Married to Queen Margrethe of Denmark for 50 years. Best known for his long-held public displeasure at not being made King of Denmark. Father-in-law of Australian-born Princess Mary. Brief illness.

Sir Billy Graham KBE, 99, February 21, Montreat, North Carolina. American Baptist evangelist, preacher, and author. World's first fundamentalist Christian television evangelist. Stadium preacher, running the Billy Graham Crusades for 61 years [1947-2008]. Spiritual advisor and counsellor to 12 US Presidents. Author of 33 best-selling Christian tracts. Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom [1983] and honourary British knighthood [2001]. Parkinson’s disease.

Steve Folkes, 59, February 27, Moss Vale, New South Wales. Australian rugby league player and coach. Six-time Grand Finalist and four-time Premiership winner in 269 games for Canterbury-Bankstown [1978-91]. Represented New South Wales and Australia at second-row. Coached Canterbury-Bankstown for eleven years [Premiership 2004] after retiring as a player. Coaching district team Moss Vale Dragons at time of death. Cardiac arrest.


† March †

Sir Roger Bannister CH CBE, 88, March 3, Oxford, England. British athlete, doctor, neurologist, academic. First person to run a mile in less than four minutes [3m 59.4s,1954, Oxford]. Won Commonwealth Games "Miracle Mile" v Australia's John Landy [Vancouver, Canada, 1954], both running sub-4 minute times. Master of Pembroke College, Oxford [1985-93]. Parkinson's Disease.

Jeff St. John, 71, March 6, Perth. Australian musician and singer. Three top ten hits in the 1970's. Performed wheel-chair bound in various bands and lead singer of The Id, the first Australian band to be busted for marijuana possession [1967]. Sang Australian national anthem Sydney 2000 Paralympics. Complications of life-long condition Spina Bifida.

Count Hubert de Marquis Givenchy, 91, March 10, Romilly-sur-Aigre, France. French aristocrat, fashion designer and motion picture costumier. "The king of haute couture". 50 year career and founder House of Givenchy, emphasizing "restrained style" for high-profile clients. Best known for "the little black dress" worn by Audrey Hepburn [1961]. Chevalier Légion d'honneur [1983]. Medal l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1992). Died in his sleep. Old age.

Professor Sir Stephen Hawking CH CBE, 76, March 14, Cambridge, England. British academic, astro-physicist, author, film and documentary maker. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge University. Author of A Brief History of Time [1988], selling 30+ million copies. Children's author, science-fiction film producer, television personality. Proponent of "black holes" and the "Big Bang Theory". US Presidential Medal of Freedom [2009]. Complications of a rare form of Lou Gehrig's disease [ALS], from which he suffered for 50 years.

Sudan, c.45, March 19, Laikipia, Kenya. Last of the known world's male northern white rhinoceros. 44 years in captivity. Survived by only two females, his daughter and grand-daughter. Euthanised due to leg infection and old age.

Charles Lazarus, 94, March 22, Washington DC. American toy maker and founder of international retail chain Toys'r'Us. Opened first store in 1957, remaining CEO for 35 years. Company announced closure of all US operations and 735 stores as part of bankruptcy liquidation, one week prior to his death. Old age and chronic illness.


† April †

Jocelyn Newman AO, 80, April 1, Berry, New South Wales. Australian conservative politician and three term senator for Tasmania. Former lawyer, farmer and hotelier. Advocate of women's and children's rights and five years in the Howard ministry in social welfare portfolios. Son, Campbell, former conservative Queensland Premier [2012-15], husband Kevin a minister in the Fraser ministry. Survived breast and uterine cancer while in office. Alzheimer's disease.

Winnie Mandela, 81, April 2, Johannesburg, South Africa. South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, convicted criminal and former wife of Nelson Mandela. Jailed and internally exiled by apartheid regime. Convicted of kidnapping and fraud under ANC Govt. and twice dodged jail on appeal. South African MP for more than 20 years until her death. Chronic illnesses.

David Buckel, 60, April 14, New York. American human rights lawyer and environmentalist. Set himself on fire in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, leaving a suicide note saying his was an “early death by fossil fuel” and “it may be clear that staying in the world is doing more harm than good". Self immolation.

Willow, 14, c.April 16, Buckingham Palace, London. Welsh Pembroke corgi. Described as "the last of the Queen's corgi's". 14th generation descendant of Susan [pedigree name Hickathrift Pippa], given to Queen Elizabeth II on her 18th birthday in 1944. Old age.

Barbara Bush, 92, April 17, Houston, Texas. Former US First Lady. Wife of 41st President of the US, George H.W. Bush and mother of the 43rd President of the US, George W. Bush. Champion of childhood and family literacy. Grave's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure.

Darrel Eastlake, 75, April 19, Wyoming, New South Wales. Legendary Australian sports broadcaster. Best known for his booming, excitable voice. Popularised rugby league State of Origin series, and revolutionised television commentary of Olympic weightlifting. Complications of Alzheimer's Disease, alcoholism, emphysema and diabetes.

Verne Troyer, 49, April 21, Los Angeles. American film and television character actor and one of the world's shortest men. Born with a rare dwarfism [HCC] leaving him with a stature of 2'8". Best known for the role of Mini-Me in the Austin Powers comedy films. Complications of HCC and chronic alcoholism.

Nabi Tajima, 117,April 22, Kikai, Japan. World's oldest person to that date. Great-great-great-grandmother with 160+ descendants. Credited longevity to eating delicious food and sleeping soundly. Extreme old age.

No.16, 43, April 27, Perth. World's oldest known arachnid kept in captivity. Female trapdoor spider [Giauque Villosus]. Last surviving specimen from collection established [1974] by 89-year-old Barbara York-Main in Curtin University spider longevity study. Extreme old age.

Larry Harvey, 70, April 28, San Francisco. American artist, anarchist, hippie, and founder of the Burning Man Festival. Adherent and promoter of an anything-goes lifestyle. Stroke.

† May †

Professor David Goodall AM, 104, May 10, Basel, Switzerland. English-born Australian academic, biologist and ecologist. Awarded PhD in Biology [1941]. Editor-in-chief of the 30-volume Ecosystems of the World, the definitive text on plant biology. Professor emeritus at Edith Cowan University, Perth, until his death. Travelled from his home in Perth to Switzerland to end his own life through "assisted dying" because of extreme old age. Euthanised.

Ernest Medina, 81, May 8, Marinette, Wisconsin. Former US Army Captain. Commanding officer of company of the now disbanded US 23rd Infantry Division [Americal], responsible for My Lai Massacre [1968] during Vietnam War. Court-martialled on two charges of war crimes, but acquitted. Brief illness.

Tom Wolfe, 88, May 10. New York. American author, essayist and journalist. Leading figure in 1960's-70's "new journalism". Chiefly known for authoring best selling novels Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and Bonfire of the Vanities. Sepsis.

Tom E. Lewis, 59, May 11, Katherine, Northern Territory. Australian aboriginal stage, screen actor and musician. Best known for leading role in the film The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith [1978]. Cardiac arrest.
Margot Kidder, 69, May 13, Livingtone, Montana. American film actress. Best known for playing Lois Lane in the 1978 Superman motion picture. Suicide by drug and alcohol overdose.

Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, 34, May 19, Denpasar, Indonesia. Australian-Vietnamese convicted drug smuggler. A member of the so-called "Bali Nine", sentenced to life in jail for attempting to smuggle eight kilograms of heroin into Indonesia [2006]. Died in custody. Kidney cancer.

Phil Emmanuel, 65, May 24, Parkes, New South Wales. Australian rock musician. One half of The Emmanuel Bros, a perennial support act for touring superstars of the '70's and '80's. Known as "the best lead guitarist the world never knew". Asthma attack.

Alan Bean, 86, May 26, Houston, Texas. US astronaut and Navy test pilot. 4th man on the moon [Apollo 12, 1969.] Spent 59 days aboard Skylab [1973], a record duration in orbit at the time. Devoted later life to painting space scenes. Brief illness.

Cornelia Frances, 77, May 28, Sydney. British-born Australian film and television character actress. Best known for playing "nasty characters"' in soap-opera's. Played the recurring role of Morag on hit TV series Home and Away for 29 years. Bladder cancer.

Serge Dassault, 93, May 28, Paris. French military industrialist, newspaper publisher, and former French Senator. Chairman of Dassault Group, manufacturer of Mirage fighter jets. Published Le Figaro newspaper for 13 years until death. Net worth at time of death estimated at $US15B. Died at his office desk. Cardiac arrest.

† June †

Kate Spade, 55, June 5, New York. Flamboyant American fashion designer. Principally known for her eponymous 1990's "affordable luxury" handbags. Sold her label currently worth $US2.4B after 13 years [2006]. Suicide.

David Douglas Duncan, 102, June 7, Grasse, France. Former American WWII Marine and photo-journalist. Best known for his stark photographs of American Marines in combat during the Korean War. Extreme old age.

Anthony Bourdain, 62, June 8, Strasbourg, France. American line-chef, author, novelist, journalist, television personality, raconteur. Rose to prominence with best selling profane memoir Kitchen Confidential [2000]. Pioneered modern "food tourism" with No Reservations television series. Suicide.

Eunice Gayson, 90, June 8, London. British stage, film and television actress. The original "Bond Girl". James Bond's 'love interest' in movies Dr No [1962] and From Russia With Love [1963]. Old age.

Deborah Cameron, 59, June 9, Sydney. Australian journalist and radio host. First female correspondent in Tokyo for the Sydney Morning Herald, and later morning host on ABC Local Radio in Sydney. Breast cancer.

Peter Thomson AO CBE, 88, June 20, Melbourne. Legendary Australian golfer. Won five British Open championships [1954-56, 58 & 65], including an unparalleled three consecutive wins. Known for his lazy effortless swing and calm, considered approach to the 'links' game. President of the Australian PGA for 32 years. Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame [1988]. Parkinson’s Disease.

Koko, 46, June 22, Woodside, California. Female Western Lowlands gorilla. Born in captivity. Allegedly taught sign language and was claimed to have known 2,000 words of English in Stanford University study. Well known for her affinity with cats. No descendants. Old age.

Donald Hall, 89, June 23, Wilmot, New Hampshire. American poet, essayist, playwright, literary editor, critic, biographer and children's author. "My ambition was to confuse the hell out of everyone". 14th Poet Laureate of the United States [2006-7]. Old age.

Daisy Kadibil, 95, June 26, Port Hedland, Western Australia. Australian aboriginal woman. Best known for her 800 mile trek on foot to home with sister and cousin after being removed from her family by white authorities. Inspiration for motion picture Rabbit Proof Fence [2002]. Dementia.

Joe Jackson Snr, 89, June 27, Las Vegas, Nevada. American music promoter and patriarch of the musical Jackson family. Creator of the hit-making machine the Jackson Five, featuring his sons. Progenitor of the late Michael, and Jermaine and Janet Jackson. Fathered eleven children. Pancreatic cancer.

Liz Jackson, 67, June 28, Greek Isles. Australian radio and television journalist. Winner of nine Walkley awards for outstanding reporting. Parkinson's disease.

William McBride AO CBE, 91, June 27, Sydney. Australian doctor and medical researcher. Discovered link between anti morning sickness drug thalidomide and birth defects. Later disgraced over unrelated fabrication of scientific results. Old age.


† July †

Harry M. Miller, 84, July 4, Sydney. New Zealand born Australian show business promoter and entrepreneur. High profile celebrity agent. Staged first Australian production of musical Hair [1969]. Promoted Australian tours by major international acts including Louis Armstrong and the Rolling Stones. Convicted of fraud [1982] over failed ticketing company, did 10 months jail time. Dementia.

Sam Chisholm AO, 78, July 9, Sydney. New Zealand born Australian media executive and "star maker". CEO of the Nine Network during Kerry Packer heyday [1975-89]. Survived double lung transplant [2003]. Chronic illnesses.

Peter Carington, The Lord Carrington KG, GCMG, CH, MC, 99, July 9, London. British aristocrat and conservative politician. Longest serving Member of the House of Lords [1940-2018], awarded Military Cross for valour during WWII, last surviving member of Winston Churchill's final Government [1951-55], High Commissioner to Australia [1956-59]. Foreign Secretary in Thatcher Govt. during Falklands War [1982]. Extreme old Age.

Nancy Sinatra Snr, 101, July 13. Beverly Hills, California. American socialite. First wife of Frank Sinatra [1939-51]. Extreme old age.

Adrian Cronauer, 79, July 19, Troutville, Virginia. American radio announcer, lawyer and veteran's affairs activist. News Director, US Armed Forces Radio, Saigon [1965-66]. Famous for call sign "Good Morning, Vietnam!" immoratilised in 1987 Robin Williams film of the same name. Short illness.

Tony Bullimore, 79, July 31, London. Former British Royal Marine, businessman and long distance yachtsman. Nicknamed the "British Bulldog". Best known for dramatic rescue by the Royal Australian Navy, after surviving three days in upturned hull of yacht in the remote Southern Ocean during single-handed round-the-world yacht race [1997]. Rare form of stomach cancer.


† August †

Clive Evatt Jnr, 87, August 2, Sydney. Leading Australian defamation barrister, art dealer and collector. Prominent clients included 'colourful Sydney identities' Abe Saffron, Rob Waterhouse, and Gypsy Fire. Chronic illnesses.

Joël Robuchon, 73, August 4, Geneva. French classical chef, author and entrepreneur. Named one of four "chefs of the century" [1990]. Held a record 32 Michelin stars simultaneously for his chain of Atelier restaurants, established after his "retirement" at 50. Wrote 22 cook books. Pancreatic cancer.

Jarrod Lyle, 36, August 8, Torquay, Victoria. Australian professional journeyman golfer. Beat cancer first contracted at age 17 twice, making a comeback to pro-golf at age 31, before a third and final recurrence. Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Sir V.S.Naipul TC, 85, August 11, London. Trinidadian born British/Indian author, novelist and travel writer. Nobel Laureate for Literature [2001]. Published thirty books over 50 year career. Accused of racism, colonialism, fascism, and misogyny. While married, carried on a sadomasochist affair for 24 years. Short illness.

Aretha Franklin, 76, August 16, Detroit, Michigan. American singer, songwriter, entertainer, legend. Known as "The Queen of Soul". Awarded National Medal of the Arts [1999], Presidential Medal of Freedom [2005]. First woman to be inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame [1987]. 18 Grammy Awards. Released 112 singles, including 17 in the Billboard Top Ten. Pancreatic cancer.

Kofi Annan, 80, August 18, Berne, Switzerland. Ghanian career diplomat. Secretary-General of the United Nations for two terms [1997-2006]. Nobel Peace Prize laureate jointly awarded with United Nations [2001] for humanitarian work. Opposed to the Second American/Iraq war and declared the 2003 US-led invasion "illegal". Devoted later life as a peace broker in Burma, Syria, and Kenya. Noted for his "quiet, patient, and determined" diplomatic style. Short illness.

Charles Blackman OBE, 90, August 20, Melbourne. Australian artist. Member of the "Antipodean" group [1959], rejecting abstract expressionism in favour of figurative art. Dementia.

Spencer P. Jones, 62, August 21, Melbourne. New Zealand-born Australian singer-songwriter, session musician. Lead guitarist with the 1980's bands Beasts of Bourbon and The Johnny's. Liver cancer.

Lance Thompson, 40, August 23, Sydney. Former Australian rugby league player. Appeared in 239 NRL first-grade matches for St George and Cronulla. Best known as a "hard-man" second-rower. Stroke.

John McCain, 81, August 25, Sedona, Arizona. American statesman, politician, author, and former US Navy pilot. Survived the USS Forrestal disaster [1967]. Did five and a half years as a POW in the 'Hanoi Hilton' after being shot down over North Vietnam [1967-73]. Twice elected member of the US House of Representatives, then served five consecutive terms as Republican US Senator for Arizona [1987-2018]. Died in office. Twice ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States [2000 & 2008]. Known as a "principled maverick Conservative". Brain cancer.

Mirka Mora, 90, August 27, Melbourne. French-born Australian artist, author, teacher, restaurateur, raconteur and Melbourne institution. Last surviving member of the "Heide School" of artists. Credited with creating "The Paris End" of Melbourne with husband George [1954]. Officer Ordre Arts et Lettres [2002]. Old age.


† September †

Burt Reynolds, 82, September 6, Jupiter, Florida. American film actor and Hollywood heart-throb of the '70's. Cardiac arrest.

Alan Abel, 94, September 14, Southbury, Connecticut. Notorious American hoaxer, prankster, author, 'mockumentary' film maker. Serial pest. Fooled the New York Times into running his obituary [1980], announcing the next day "reports of my demise have been grossly exaggerated". Complications of heart disease, old age.

Bob Jane, 88, September 28, Melbourne. Australian enduro racing driver and road tyre tycoon. Four-time winner 500 mile Australian Championship touring car race [1961-62 Phillip Island, 1963-64 Bathurst; Ford]. Lost Bob Jane T-Marts [est.1965] empire to son Rodney in protracted legal dispute five years before death. Prostate cancer.


† October †

Charles Aznavour, 94, October 1, Alpilles, France. French singer, actor, diplomat. Superstar crooner known as the "French Sinatra". Sold 180 million records world wide over 70 year career. Performed final concert in Tokyo ten days before death. Commandeur Légion d'Honneur [2004]. Brief illness, old age.

Ron Casey OAM, 89, October 2, Sydney. Australian radio and television broadcaster, sports journalist. The original "shock-jock". Worked on television on Wide World of Sports, and had talk-back programs on three Sydney radio stations in a 50 year career. Repeatedly sacked for racist comments. Famously involved in live television punch-up with singer and Vietnam veteran Normie Rowe [1991]. Chronic illness.

Jamal Khashoggi, 59, October 2, Instanbul. Saudi Arabian journalist, newspaper editor, and noted critic of the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince. Disappeared after entering Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain papers for forthcoming marriage. Body never found. Murder.

Montserrat Caballé, 85, October 6, Barcelona. Spanish operatic soprano. One of the world's leading opera stars during height of her career [1965-77]. Best known for recording pop anthem "Barcelona" with Freddie Mercury [1987]. Convicted of tax evasion [2015]. Appointed a Spanish Dame and a member Légion d'honneur. Chronic illnesses and stroke.

Quentin Kenihan, 43, October 6, Adelaide. Severely deformed Australian author, actor, raconteur, film buff, internet star, hustler, and disability rights activist. Became publicly known at age seven through television interviews with journalist Mike Willessee. Suffered 600+ bone fractures and wheel-chair-bound for life. Was not expected to live past 30. Complications of Osteogenesis Imperfecta.

Paul G. Allen, 65, October 15, Seattle, California. American technological innovator, entrepreneur, philanthropist, pro football and basketball team owner. Co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, with Bill Gates [1975]. Gave away more than two billion dollars during his lifetime, and developed the city of Seattle into a tech-hub. Estimate net worth at time of death $U26 billion. Complications of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Ian Kiernan AO, 78, October 16, Sydney. Australian businessman, environmentalist, entrepreneur, Around-the-World and Sydney-Hobart yachtsman. Finished sixth BOC RTW solo race, and set Australian solo circumnavigation record [1986]. Best known for establishing "Clean Up Australia Day" [1989], and subsequently "Clean Up The World". Former Australian of the Year [1994]. Short cancer-related illness.

Todd Reid, 34, c.October 22, Sydney. Former Australian Davis Cup tennis player. Tennis prodigy at 14. Wimbledon junior champion [2002]. Career cruelled by injury, making three failed comebacks before retirement [2014]. Suicide.
Colin Sylvia, 32, October 28, Mildura, Victoria. Former Australian Rules footballer. Played 163 AFL games at Melbourne and Fremantle [2004-15]. Motor crash.

John Macris, 46, October 31, Athens. Australian gangster and Sydney under-world figure. Prominent Kings Cross identity until self-exiled to Greece in 2009 after having a "contract" taken out on him due to failed murder plot. Murdered. Gunned down outside own home.


† November †

Edward "Ted" Mack, 84, November 6, Sydney. Australian politician. Independent Mayor, two-time local State member and Federal MP for and permanent fixture in North Sydney [1980-96]. Known as "the father of the Independents". Always resigned elected office on principal just before being eligible for a generous pension. Contracted terminal brain cancer two years before death. Stroke.

Sisto Malaspina, 74, November 9, Melbourne. Melbourne restaurateur and city icon. Co-owner of Melbourne's original Italian café and pasta bar Pellegrini's [est.1954] for 44 years. Killed in random stabbing attack in Melbourne CBD while on regular afternoon walk. Murdered.

Bernard Mawen, c.76-78, November 16, Fly River region, Papua New Guinea. West Papuan freedom fighter. Co-founder [1965] Free Papua Movement (OPM). Southern region commander, OPM Revolutionary Army, until his death. The last original leader, known as "the grand old man", of armed resistance against Indonesian occupation of West Papua [1962]. Natural causes.

Nicolas Roeg CBE, 90, November 23, London. British cinematographer and film director. Best known for horror movie Don’t Look Now [1974], outback drama Walkabout [1971] and films starring David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Old age.

Benita Mabo AO, 76, November 26, Brisbane. Australian indigenous land rights activist. Malanbarra woman of part ni-Vanuatu decent. Wife of Eddie Mabo of Murray Island and bore ten children. Known as "the mother of native title". Long time advocate of Australian indigenous, Torres Strait and Pacific Islander education. Chronic illnesses.

Bernardo Bertolucci, 77, November 26, Rome. Italian Marxist film maker and screen writer. Best Director Academy Award and co-writer for The Last Emperor [1987]. Made 1960's political films before moving to Hollywood. Directed notorious initially banned feature film Last Tango in Paris [1972]. Honorary Palme d'Or. Spent last 15 years wheelchair bound after botched spinal operation. Long illness.

Stephen Hillenburg, 57, November 26, Los Angeles. American teacher, animator, television producer. Creator of cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants [1999]. Motor neurone disease.

John Johnston, 100, November 27, Adelaide. Australian businessman. Co-founder with Godfrey Cohen of Godfrey's vacuum cleaner retail chain, after opening first store in Melbourne in 1939. After twice selling the company, bought it back again five months before his death. Extreme old age.

George H.W Bush, 94, November 30, Houston, Texas. 41st President of the United States [1989-93], former US diplomat, Texas oil tycoon and WWII US Navy airman. Eight years vice-president under Ronald Reagan. Authorised First Iraq War [1990]. Presided over final years of the Cold War [1947-1991]. Son George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States. Husband of Barbara, who died in April aged 92. Parkinson's disease.


† December †

Paul Sherwen, 62, December 2, Kampala, Uganda. British professional cycling road racer, journalist, TV personality. Twice British road champion. Competed seven times as a domestique in Le Tour de France for five finishes, and commentated on the event for 33 years with co-commentator Phil Liggett following retirement. Cardiac arrest.

Vincent Greentree, 65, December 3, Sydney. Homeless Australian man. Lived on the streets of inner-city Woolloomooloo for 39 years. Local institution, teetotalling chain-smoker, well known for his small one-word graffiti written on walls with a felt pen. Pneumonia.

Pete Shelley, 63, December 6, Tallinn, Estonia. British musician, singer/songwriter. Leader of seminal punk band, Buzzcocks [1976-81], and one of the few punks to have a successful solo career. Cardiac arrest.

Penny Marshall, 75, December 17, Los Angeles. American film and television actor and director. First came to prominence with starring role in popular long running television sit-com Laverne & Shirley [1976–1983]. Later became first woman to direct Hollywood movie grossing more than $100M at the US box office, Big [1988]. Complications of diabetes.

Paddy Ashdown, The Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, CGMC, CH, KBE, 77, December 22, London. British soldier, spy, politician, diplomat, life peer. Former Royal Marine [1959-72], Secret Intelligence Service MI6 [1972-75], MP [1983-2018], Leader UK Liberal Democrats for 11 years [1988-89], High Representative Bosnia and Herzegovina [2002-06]. Bladder cancer.

John Marshall, 60, December 23, Sydney. Champion Australian jockey. Won 1999 Melbourne Cup on Rogan Josh at age 42. Chiefly known as a long-time stable rider for the legendary Bart Cummings. Won a Sydney jockey's premiership and rode more than 2,000 metropolitan winners. Pancreatic cancer.

Penny Cook, 61, December 26, Sydney. Australian television, stage and film actor. Best known for leading role in more than 1000 episodes of 1980's hit TV series, A Country Practice. Founded Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company [1979], and directed or played in more than 40 theatre productions, last appearing on stage several weeks before death. Short cancer-related illness.

wackjobs riding hobby horses

                                                           Shane Flanagan, former coach, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks RLFC. Photo: Wolter Peeters

Comrades,

It was a sweet, delicious, ironic bookend to an annus horribilis for the Gumnut; the Prime Minister's favourite sporting team, the Cronulla-Sutherland Rugby League Football Club aka "the Sharks", found themselves in very very deep shit just six days short of the 2,018th anniversary of the birth of Our Lord The Saviour. The Sharks were fined a hefty $800K for multiple infractions of the rules and their coach, Shane "Flanno" Flanagan, was found to be an outright shonk and shyster, not once, but twice - and as a consequence will now be banished from the game for life. Of course, ScoMo is not guilty by association, but his footy team is clearly mis-managed by shady people hanging around in the shadows running rackets in a dodgy world where not all is as it seems.

Some backstory is required here for out-of-towners. I'll try to keep it short. Back in 2013 the Sharks coach was busted by ASADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency for injecting snaky substances into the eyeballs of his players in the "supplements saga" in 2011, and he was banned for all of the year 2014. ScoMo was fully horrified. Flanno then made a come back and was hailed a hero after taking the Sharks all the way to 2016 Premiership. ScoMo was over the moon. Only problem is, Flanno breached the "bail conditions" of his 12 month suspension, by continuing to have expressly forbidden contact with the club on an almost daily basis throughout '14, about "training arrangements, coaching department structures, negotiations with player agents, discussing player retention and recruitment, and even approving a few press releases along the way." As a consequence, the National Rugby League has now "de-registered" Flanagan, and given him a breech notice to show cause as to why he shouldn't be rubbed out of the game forever, altogether, for life with no parole - off-the-fuck you go, son. ScoMo's mortification was be beyond belief and he was so upset that he promptly left the country and went to Iraq.

So, not only has the Tory Govt. gone down the gurgler and through the S-Bend and is facing annihilation at the polls, the football team of which the PM is the defacto No.1 Ticket Holder has now been shot out through the Malabar Deep Ocean Outfall, with reputations - such as they were - in tatters all over the shop. What a mess, Mr Hart! What else could go wrong?

ScoMo seems to have the reverse Midas Touch at the moment, as everything he's associated with turns into a turd. Scotty would not have joined in on the mirth of the nation when they discovered that an obscure member of the Morrison Ministry had been busted for alleged immorality by that most august journal-of-record New Idea. Talk about LOL! An old fashioned "women's magazine" gets the scoop on the Member for Mallee failing miserably to get a sly root in Hong Kong; a town bristling with "working girls", not to mention Sugar Babes looking for Sugar Daddies [whatever that amounts to]. Of course, much hilarity ensued and droll commentary was made along the lines of "Australia deserves a better standard of sexting from its politicians" and "It's people like this who give James Bond a bad name". The Member for Mallee then falls on his sword after being hoist by his own petard - but really, he should be the subject of abject pity more than anything else - despite all the time, trouble and expense he went to "seeking arrangements" while on a 'private visit' to Honkers, he couldn't even get to first base, not even a hand-job, and will now forever be known in the ultra-conservative back blocks of Victoria as a filthy would-be adulterer who got caught, but didn't cut the mustard. Andrew "Broadly Speaking" Broad is bound to enjoy his Xmas, now that he's on holidays - permanently.

                                                                   Former MHR for Mallee, Andrew Broad,  Photo:  Jason Edwards /Herald Sun

The only positive thing to come out of the whole tawdry episode is that the Country Party now faces extinction or at the very least being reduced to a mere parliamentary rump without party status at the next election. Even the most right wing of rural electorates are now under siege; the ballot paper in New England just as a for instance will be as long as your arm as a swag of independents and sundry froot loops with "preference whisperers" try to unseat that Inbred Tomato and fair-dinkum dead-set ridgey-didge dinky-di adulterer in Barnaby Joyce. And the Libs are shitting bricks, knowing full well that they can never govern in the own right, always having to rely on a coalition with those agricultural root rats and screaming hypocrites.

After Wentworth, the political landscape has changed forever. You only have to look at the staggering DanSlide in Victoria; a mighty triumph for the Pinko's who inflicted heavy casualties on the Tories and at very long odds managed to wipe out all the golf courses reserved exclusively for male Liberal Party members on Melbourne's prestigious "sandbelt". Gone, in one fell swoop. But it's the Victorian Legislative Council which points to the way of the future with an unruly mob of rag-tag fringe parties, including the leader of the former Australian Sex Party [which has forsaken its roots entirely to morph into something called the "Reason Party"], getting a bum on the finest of leather seats. Under the weird proportional voting system for the Victorian upper house, as it stands, Labor has 18 seats, Liberals 11, the Country Party and the Greens just one seat each, and the other ten seats went to a bunch of wackjobs riding their own hobby horses. The Miracle of Democracy never ceases to astonish.

And of course, that's not all that's been going on.

Over in the Land of the Free, it's notable that DJ Trump!'s long-time personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, is no longer free, being sent down for a three year stretch in a Federal Penitentiary for "a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct". From the day I first heard of the existence of Stormy Daniels, I've been saying to anyone who'll listen - that woman will be the downfall of the 45th President. It took them years and years to get the well known gangster Al Capone behind bars, and even then they could only book him on tax evasion, and so it will be for The Donald. Hush money is strictly verboten when you try to hide it under the Campaign Finance Laws and as Mr Cohen now knows, there's hell to pay if you are caught. The list of the now-outed criminal associates of the POTUS is too long to detail here, but DJ! is looking more and more like the ruthless mob boss that he is. Never mind that he did all he could to rig his own rise to power, with the help of the odd Ruskie subverting every principle of a free and fair election. Bobby "Three Sticks" Mueller will sort that out on the quiet in due course; he won't make no 'final report' on Russian Collusion, as many people vainly hope for - the special counsel is a top-flight prosecutor of many decades renown and will do just that - prosecute - with extreme prejudice, to the full extent of The Law. Given that it's generally accepted that US Presidents can't go to the jailhouse while in office, Special Counsel will just indict a "known person" to be dealt with by the courts at a later date, and there certainly aint gonna be no pardon from any incoming Democratic President, oh no siree. Under those circumstances, Impeachment is a waste of time if all you end up with is Mighty Mike Pence. The Home of The Brave is looking at a pretty stark 2019.

And back in the Heart of the Empire - the Poms are boiling and broiling in a cauldron of fat of their own making, there's hubble bubble toil and trouble and are they're ready for their island to lazily drift off somewhere in the direction of Iceland. It's remarkable how PM The Rt. Hon. Teflon Tessa has hung onto her job as the common people take to the streets, while here, the Tories can sack a Prime Minister literally overnight in an ult-right fundamentalist coup, and there's no hint of rioting. I don't claim to come come even close to pretending to understand the intricate ins and outs and ups and downs and whirl it all about of Brexit, but they certainly have tied themselves up in knots, S&M style, and there's no Harry Houdini on the horizon to get them out of it. In the final paralysis, and with the festive season is upon us, it seems to come down to choice...those who prefer a real English ale, a home grown turnip and some Stilton cheese, and those who would much rather have vintage Champagne, Normandy oysters and Roquefort on the Xmas banqueting table. The best of British luck with that, chaps.

a very different time

Comrades,

When I learned that George H.W. Bush had shuffled off This Mortal Coil, I immediately thought...there's a man who came from a very different time...1989 was his first year in his only term as POTUS.

When George took the oath and moved into the Oval Office I'd only recently knocked up the missus who I'd just "shacked-up" with [and of course these days you can't say 'knocked up the missus' without attracting opprobrium] and my first child, who was born a bastard, was just weeks old when the Mighty Balmain Tigers RLFC were robbed blind in the Grand Final and Backdoor Benny still has nightmares about that drop goal attempt that hit the black dot.

The music was absolute shite, the Baby Animals and the Bondi Cigars had only just started off on their brilliant careers as a for instance, and the Jackson 5 and Gladys Knight and the Pips called it quits. Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were the best they could come up with in popular movies.

I had to look that up in the encyclopedia because if you got me around a dining table now and asked "righto, Craves, take us through the 80's" I'd be struggling big time. But, as a radio news journalist who's stock-in-trade was the telephone, I do remember that any kind of hand-held mobile phone was a real rarity and devices like "The Brick" were still a few years off for common use back in '89 [the radio station did have a couple of 'mobiles' about the size of a car battery and as heavy], the internet was a weird fledgling universe known only to geeks with science degrees, [primitive computers with fuzzy green screens on cathode ray tubes had just replaced great clunking Olivetti typewriters in the newsroom, much to the dismay and resistance of the Luddite old guard - "they'll never catch on. if it's not broke, why fix it?"], Google was still a decade away, Mark Zuckerburg was five years old, and everybody chain-smoked at work.

While Comrade Bob Hawke was cheating on his wife and was well into his third term in office and the former Oxford champion can still chunder a yard of beer at age 88, George Snr's best buddy on the international cocktail circuit was the unlamented Maggie Thatcher and he wanted to spend one last summer at the family beach house at Kennebunkport, Maine, before he died and he ate a few oysters and drank whisky in his final weeks and is consistently rated by the pundits in hindsight as about the 6th or 7th worst US President in history [not including the incumbent].

George did jack-shit about Tiananmen Square, [Jiang Zemin got away with blue murder and he's still hiding in plain view at 92], his military adventure in Panama to depose the late Manuel Noriega is now a footnote to history but The War on Drugs didn't go so well, and then sending in Gen. Mad Dog Schwarzkopf to chase them damned Iraqi's out of the strategic oil reserves in Kuwait [yeah, right, a good cause for a Texas oil man] with pointless loss of life was a swift victory and an abject failure simultaneously. Bush the Elder presided over a world wide recession as the American economy went down the S-bend and he didn't have to do much to end the Cold War; the Berlin Wall astonishingly crumbled overnight to almost everyone's complete surprise and the Soviet Union imploded all by itself, but to his almost singular credit H.Dubbya did sign the START 1 treaty which finalised Reagan's work to the end of the plainly insane nuclear weapons stockpile, and resulted in an 80% reduction in the number of nuclear tipped warheads that could be loosed upon this world - which then stopped worrying about The Bomb. But that's where my praise ends.

I was scouring the new-fangled World Wide Web for a single image that might best sum up the Bush presidency, and was having a hard time of it, before this one popped up.

How little we remember, how much we forget...

a Goose drowns his sorrows

Social Drinkers...

You have to question the widsom of Anheuser-Busch's marketing dept. getting tied up with a god-bothering loser - but then again, an excellent name...what a Goose!

Everyone knows some crazy bat-shit goes down in the countryside, but the only question is...does 300 bowls of ScoMo's Super Special Curry from Ceylon go down well in West Wyalong with a flat-top truck stacked with Goose stubbies?

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/24/scott-morrison-thought-he-was-promoting-australia-instead-he-advertised-an-american-beer

Always comforting to know a Massive Piss Tank is in charge...

ScoMo has gone too far this time

Comrades,

Since when did the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks RLFC become the South Pacific Sharks? They've got Pacific Ocean coastline down there in The Shire, that's for certain, but really? Sure, a lot of big beautiful boofy blokes from the islands play rugby league in Straya, but ScoMo has gone too far this time, in the traditional cross-dressing exercise at APEC, last weekend in Morseby.

Lord Jesus Christ, save us...

Never mind that handing out commemorative tropical leitmotif footy jumpers is as about as tasteful as gifting a hand-knitted Juventus soccer jersey to the Pope, doesn't Our Scott cut a dashing figure on the international stage?

The Prime Minister has such a total grasp of all the fine minutia of diplomacy and foreign policy that it came as no surprise to learn that he was surprised when he found out our major regional trading partner had taken umbrage at his perfectly muddle-headed plan to move the Strayan embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to it's spiritual home Bethlehem - where it belongs - deep in the heart of the sweet Baby Jesus. How was he to know it wouldn't work with the electors of Wentworth or wash with Jakarta? ScoMo is so on top of it, he might as well just leave the aid budget to Her Excellency The Minister for Foreign Affairs the Hon. Senator Marise Payne, because she well knows, and will tell anyone who'll listen, that the south sea islanders are "only in it for the money".

Who knows what went down in Singapore, but didn't ScoMo do a fine job flying into the Top End with Old Mate Shinzo "the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit Darwin since World War Two" [does that mean one of his predecessors was flying one of the bombers? Never mind]. And what about that fabulous scheme he cooked up with Old Mate Pencey to chuck all the reffo's off Manus Island and move the US Marine Corps straight in to ward off the wicked advances of the Chinese? Brilliant! Of course, nobody would have bothered to ask the good folk of the Admiralty Islands what the think of it, but that's neither here nor there. They're probably heathens anyway. Now, Our Scott is hosting the President of India, the first to ever make a State Visit here, so it's big. God, the three-ringed circus never ends. The PM likely got some choice kangaroo cuts curried up for him for dinner last night at Admiralty House. Likes to impress, does ScoMo. And tonight they're going to the cricket together at The G. Woo! Hoo! Just in time to hit the hustings, the scallywag.
In the meantime, the Miracle of Democracy really has gone wild in Melbourne, where the Greens - who have a peculiar "toxic culture problem" - are in a death fight with the governing Pinko's for the hipster/yuppie scum vote in the bellwether battleground seats of Brunswick and Richmond. My Spy on the Ground in the seat of Richmond has been besieged by doorknockers to the point where she can barely go out for the shouting mobs of rent-a-crowd campaign workers milling around outside. The Greens have been caught on yr social meejah calling out a perfectly honourable female Liberal MP as a "disgusting bitch-faced slug-parrot", and by all reports Pinko campaign posters have been defaced with lurid green coloured unauthorised stickers saying VOTE-ONE-FOR-A-FUCKED-FUTURE. The authorities, quite rightly, want to know what little shit's done that.

Be that as it may, running down the lists of candidates, I was most disappointed to see that the Australian Sex Party has now somehow morphed into Fiona Patten's Reason Party while no-one was looking. WTF, is an over-used phrase, but hey? What is the reason? Is this a clever ploy to confuse and deceive lily-white innocent voters into casting their ballots in favour of filth?

At least this fine upstanding Melburnian wannabe pollie pulls no punches in his election advertising...

As a footnote, it was pleasing to see the Victorian Electoral Commission release this map clearly defining the demographics of the most hotly contested region of Victoria to assist psephologists in the whirl-wind of tomorrow night's tally room.:The enemy are at the gates! To the boxes!

an "uncooked pig's head"

Comrades,

Never mind geo-politics or Scomo looking sensational in a fancy satin shirt waving from the back row at APEC, one of the major stories of the recent "summit season" has been shamefully overlooked by the media.
The Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa, ran into a touch of trouble when he in dropped in at Brisbane, having an "uncooked pig's head" chucked at him amid a barrage of Samoan invective...maybe he's not universally loved in the Samoan diaspora?

http://sobserver.ws/en/16_11_2018/local/38507/Australian-Police-investigate-attack-on-PM-Tuilaepa.htm

BTW...recently I got together some stories from Samoa, and finally cranked my arse into gear to put them up on the Internet thingy.
It's a bit more than 10,000 words, so I don't expect anyone will read them, nor do I care really, but you can see them here if you want...

https://postcardsfromupolu.blogspot.com/

the Tuesday after the first Monday in November

Comrades,

The beautiful chaos of the Miracle of Democracy was on full display in the US Mid Terms. Oh, yes siree...serious psephologists with the election fever would have been wetting their pants in delight. No one else does it quite like it.

Only in America could a dead white male be elected, with a cadaver winning a seat in the Nevada state legislature. Never mind that the recently deceased candidate was a prominent legal brothel owner who's as dead as a muthfukka's corpse was found in bed in unsuspicious circumstances during his 72nd birthday celebrations at the Love Ranch, by a notorious male porn-star. Dennis Hof's platform of hyper-pro-Trumpotus far-right redneck policies was enough to push his ghost over the line, so it can only be assumed that the Nevada State Capitol in Carson City will now be haunted by a pimping poltergeist.

In the starkest of contrasts, more than 100 women of all shapes and sizes and political colours and stripes were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time since universal suffrage was introduced for federal elections in The States back in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. "Coloured Peoples" of every description were also elected to a myriad of offices for the first time; Afro/Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, crikey, even Red Indians got a look in [not counting Elizabeth Warren], and there's never been any shortage of cowboys. There might have even been some Russians in there somewhere.

Then there's the curious idea of holding all the elections you could possibly think of every two years on the same day - the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

All 435 seats in The House were up for re-election [MHR's have two year terms, so they all know they are only really ever short-term part-time politicians], a third of the Senate went 'round again, then there were Gubernatorial races, elections for state legislatures, polls for judges, sheriffs, mayors, town councils, and voter propositions [read 'local referendums'] on all kinds of weird State issues. Like legalising weed in the Great State of Michigan; a proposal which got up by a wide margin 56%-44%. Out there you can now grow 12 pot plants and have 2.5 ounces of wacky tobaccy floating around the house without coming to the attention of the authorities. Yoo! Hoo!

But when all was said and done, in Congress there was an exact "flip" across the country, with the Dems winning precisely the same number of seats that the Grand Old Party lost. A two-party preferred Democracy if ever there was one. Let's not go to the contests for the US senate, which is the most unrepresentative of unrepresentative swills in all the free world.

The problem for the Yanks is that elections are run by the States along partisan lines, and all 50 of them do it differently, so the opportunities for disgraceful wholesale gerrymandering are legion and endless. To tackle the problem, the New York Times did an earnest editorial calling for the size of the House of Representatives to be bolstered to 593 seats, while Time magazine went much much further and proposed an astonishing 930 bums on seats in The House. Of course, all they have to do is establish an independent National Electoral Commission to do the "re-districting" along world's best practice lines and it's problem solved - right there - but that'd trample all over State's Rights, and would require an amendment to the Constitution, so that aint gonna happen. Or they could just adopt compulsory voting, but that would be dead against all the known precepts of The Land of The Free.

Much song and dance has been made about how the American electorate was so as mad as hell about The Donald that they went to the boxes in droves in an "historic turn-out" for the Mid-Terms to teach the low brown dog bastard scumbag a lesson in democracy. Really? OK, 100 million ballots were cast for the first time ever, however, the best estimate - and it can only ever be a best estimate even if you used an abacus and slide-rule - was that the average nationwide turn-out for the The House and Senate was about 48% of eligible voters. So, as usual, half the electorate couldn't be damned and/or give a blue root.

Same as it ever was:

Everyone knew, well before the election, that DJ Trump! was stuffed. Good & Proper. Losing the House means His Turdness will never get another penny in Federal money to do anything even mildly contentious. The Big Beautiful Wall along the Mexican border will never be built. Space Wars will never happen. The planet might implode, but nothing will happen. The Donald will be pulling out what's left of his outrageous bouffant and will be fully bald as well as suffering from meat sickness in two years time with complete & utter frustration and too many cheeseburgers & Cokes, as he is thwarted at every turn by a bitter Democratic Party consumed by rage and hatred and hell bent on revenge. United we stand, divided, we fall. Good luck America...see you later.

Meantime, back in The Most Unstable Democracy in the South Pacific, I heard the Tongue Speaker in Chief get himself completely tied in verbal knots when a local journo buttonholed him about his campaign bus, and how it could possibly keep up with him without breaking the long-standing world land speed record as he hitched a ride on aviation all over the vastness of Queensland. He wasn't campaigning or nuthin', just acquainting swinging voters with his now trademarked True Blue Fair Dinkum Ordinary Suburban Pie Eating Beer Swilling Baseball Cap Wearing Bogan Bloke Next Door image. In Tory circles it's known as "Project Sell Scomo", now that the fundamentalist fascists have disposed of that Poncy Prick from Point Piper as unelectable.

I knew that Scomo likes to introduce himself to folks he doesn't know as Scomo, but I had no idea that the Hon. Prime Minister is so taken by the contraction of his own name, that he now signs his moniker on all official documents, autograph hunter's books and campaign buses as Scomo.

Of course, nothing will ever beat the now-disgraced dodgy Chinese donation trouserer, the former Hon. Sen. Sam Dastyari's absolute corker of a Pinko Bus on the campaign trail back in '16.

the staggering Champagne bill

Comrades,

God only can imagine the staggering Champagne bill in downtown Nouméa after the 48 hour public-drinking ban was lifted following the weekend's independence referendum. Oh man. Millions of euro's on the good stuff shipped in especially.

Tchin! Tchin! C'est mignon! Champagne corks flying through chic bars and across the bows of all that useless boatage in the Port Plaisance marina like it's New Years Eve! In a city that flies more French flags than Tricolours in Paris, the Caldoche would have been partying like there's no tomorrow.

Upcountry on their sprawling cattle ranches, they would have spent days rooting around in le caves finding themselves some choice vintage Château Lafite Rothschild to swill after quaffing all the Vintage Champagne Krug 1998, in grand celebration. C'est la France!!

THIS IS FRANCE, alright. Oh yes "voila! we want to given them independence, sure, but not just now", the Caldoche cry. There are dark clouds on the horizon. Yeah right. Yawn. Haven't we heard that one before?

It was very very cheeky of the kid President Macron to remind the Néo-Calédoniens that "we have kept our promise for 30 years" and then he repeated himself to emphasize the point in his address to the Republic.

Wot! 30 years! Oh, c'mon Emmaunel, you were barely out of short pants when the Matignon accords were signed with the clear intention of giving the French ample warming to sort out their affairs before the Elysee cut the purse strings and the Kanak took over. In '88, mate, the promise was that in '98 there would be a vote on the "transfer of sovereignty and full autonomy" to New Cal, and what did the Kanak get? The Nouméa Accord. 20 more years of shit.

The bloke who got Matignon together and polished that particular turd, Michel Rocard, died last year of old age it's been that long, and the Nouméa Accord was just another warning, this time, with 20 years notice if you hadn't heard the first time. Self-rule was coming to town and there would be an agonizingly slow electoral process chiseled in stone to finally achieve full self determination, three decades on...oh no, sorry, not now...in due course, but only if the Kanak put their guns away.

So, you had to be astonished by the absurdity of the typically French over-reaction on Sunday evening after a few of the local boys started chucking rocks at the local cops, and then dragged a stack of old tyres onto the main road out of Nouméa and set them ablaze with some gazoil and handy tree branches. The authorities responded with a fleet of armoured personnel carriers driven by honourable French tank men, led by one which had an armoured bulldozer attachment stuck on the front, and about 150 heavily armed gendarme in full combat gear toting fearsome looking shooters. But, by the time the French got to the "protest", the Kanak kids had well and truly scarpered, leaving the pile of rubber to burn, baby, burn. So laughable, so Frenchy. A random young Caldoche interviewed on the telly news said in English "they were just throwing a few stones, y'know, it happens all the time here".

The vote was closer than expected, phphh! we know that, but unlike previous proposals designed to obfuscate, at least this one was a sensible enough question in simple French:

An 80.63% turn out in 2018 was admirable and respectable, and so the Miracle of Democracy worked mighty fine there for the colonialists - for the moment. And don't they love their "moments" However, you better party on now, baby, because the local indigènes know where you live and they're coming to get all yr stuff. Just have a look at the map. You're hemmed in.

Back in May, on a "goodwill tour" of the colonies, Macron went to the site of the Ouvéa massacre out there on the Loyalty Islands, but did he say anything close to "je suis désolé". Oh, non, non, not on your Nelly. Laid a couple of wreaths and wore a silly garland on his head that made his idiot grin look even more childish. The land he was standing on is the thing in question, sonny boy, and he just didn't get it.

Never mind the UN "Committee of 24" getting involved, which they will, Kid Emmanuel don't understand that the Kanak have very long memories; way way before 1853. After being unconscionably rat-fucked for 165 years, another generation is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things for the locals. Two more votes and four more years are in the glacial democratic pipeline - for Chrissake! - before the inevitable peaceful transition to true independence which is, as everybody knows, the only thing that will finish it.

I'm entirely certain I'm not alone when in exasperation, all I can do is cock my snoot in the direction of metropolitan France and say...Kanaky Pour La Kanak!

mushroom clouds in the morning

"The Soviet Threat". Missiles & Rockets magazine, 14th Jan 1963


Comrades,

This one made p.17 in the papers and rated a brief mention in the back half of some news bulletins for one evening, as it was too true form to see DJ Trump! being flippant with the seething masses of humanity, so it wasn't seen as very newsworthy. The under 40's are just not shitting bricks about The Bomb like they used to.

Having been considered as "unworkable" and a "treaty in name only" for years, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF] - which effectively bans the use or development of any nuclear missile that travels between 500 and 5,500 kilometres - has now been unceremoniously junked.

All that good work Ronnie and Gorbie did back in '87 to finally settle the peace question in Europe [not counting the Balkans] - gorn...ripped up and tossed out a White House window like so much ticker-tape by some wack job in the Oval Office.

Of course the Ruskies have the full arsenal of INF range missiles, but they say that's perfectly fine because none of them are nuclear armed, but they wouldn't need much tinkering to pop on a multi-pronged atomic warhead capable of lobbing a few megatons about willy-nilly, if required. The Americans say that China has to sign on to the treaty, when Peking has never shown any interest in Intermediate Range Missiles, and are happy enough to claim that they're only in The Bomb caper, because they have to be.

The Yanks have any number of INF toys on the drawing board too - yikes! - there's now even talk of them also developing a nuclear-tipped torpedo, I mean that is just such a great idea; they could blow up Vladivostok before anyone even noticed.

People are saying it's the start of a New Cold War, but a renewed nuclear arms race has been going on for years...Vlad and Barack were very leery of each other, let's face it. Putin didn't have a "pee-pee tape" to play on Obama

Treaty or no treaty, Russia has the entire planet covered with the Devil's Own Death Delivery System - the SR-28 Sarmat Super Heavy - anyway... https://themiracleofdemocracy.blogspot.com/2018/03/comrades-idea-of-them-damned-ruskies.html
If they're well enough resourced - which they are - neither side has any trouble getting their boffins to bang their heads together to come up with all sorts of very freaky missile combinations. MAD needs to be guaranteed on both sides, because there is no such thing as tactical nuclear warfare. They're working on the pretty standard assumption of "never pull a gun on anyone, unless you are going to use it"

Of course the Trumpotus is a little distracted at the minute on the hustings, in a crowd pulling competition with the former POTUS at those last minute campaign rallies in the latest round of barely-contained chaos in the Miracle of Demorcay, known as the US Mid-Terms. DJ! is likely to lose control of the House and then nothing, absolutely nothing, will get done in the USA for the next two years. Congress has been well used to the stupendous cost of funding a nuclear weapons program for nigh on 80 years, so nothing will change there.

As a result, The Donald didn't have the time to break the news that he was planning to pull out of the INF to Old Mate Vlad in person, so, to make sure the electorate knew he wasn't soft on nuclear weapons, DJ! promptly dispatched his leading hawk, Secretary of State Lil' Micky Pompeo, to Moscow.

When Pomps - who's only been in the job five months after almost everything else he's ever touched has turned to shit - showed up in the gilded meeting hall in the Kremlin, Putin button-holed him with a shot of vodka and said "oi, Micky...wuz this I hear? Has your eagle eaten all the olives and left only the arrows behind?" in a clever allusion to the Great Seal of the United States of America. Them damned Ruskies know their insignia.

Outwitted from the off, Lil' Micky reputedly replied "I'll get back to you on on that, but I didn't bring any more olives".

Ike's military/industrial complex is rubbing its hands together in glee with all the shiny new nuclear hardware they're itching to sell for a king's ransom, so, as usual, the best we can do is keep our heads down and scan the horizon for mushroom clouds in the morning.

"Shelter from Atomic Attack in Existing Buildings". US Federal Civil Defence Administration technical manual, 1952