Saturday 30th of March 2024

Gus Leonisky's blog

australian crawl, murdoch style...

murdoch inc

James Murdoch has been re-elected as the chairman of British broadcaster BSkyB, but critics who wanted him to resign over the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Britain say his position is weakened.

BSkyB said Murdoch won the support of more than 81 per cent of shareholders who voted on Tuesday, while nearly 19 per cent voted against him at the company's annual meeting.

News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Murdoch's father Rupert Murdoch, owns 39 per cent of the company.

the ink sewers...

PUTRID

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL has told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that the British press has become "frankly putrid in many of its elements". He believes the whole newspaper industry has moved downmarket, aping celebrity magazines in an attempt to increase circulation.

Campbell, a former Daily Mirror journalist who became Tony Blair's spin doctor, believes investigative journalism is "dying". He said budget cuts mean journalists are now largely desk-bound and rely on private investigators to get stories.

sick and tired of lifting the dumbbells...

dumboanddumbells

 

The Opposition says it is considering not putting out an alternative budget update, after Treasurer Wayne Swan announced $11.5 billion in savings to get the budget back to surplus in 2012-13.

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says the Government steals its policies and the Coalition is tired of doing the "heavy lifting".

He says the Government's decision to make cuts to the public service to help make savings is stolen from the Opposition's policy play book.

'Well it's no surprise and we welcome the Government copying us. I wish they'd copy us on everything and then maybe the country would be in better shape," he said.

of rudd and goldfishes..

ruddrudd...

Someone in the Labor Party remarked yesterday that the former prime minister Kevin Rudd assumes that everyone has the memory of a goldfish".

The MP, like many others, was a touch staggered at Rudd's call over the weekend for the ALP to embrace greater internal democracy or perish.

He has been railing against factional thuggery and calling for the empowerment of the great unwashed on and off since he was deposed in June last year.

But with the three-day ALP national conference beginning on Friday, and the party reforms recommended in the post-election review conducted by John Faulkner, Bob Carr and Steve Bracks to be hotly debated, Rudd has joined in.

ritewingnuts in the us...

ritewingnutsUS

Mr Cain and Mrs Bachmann expressly endorsed the controversial interrogation technique – in which subjects are repeatedly made to feel they are drowning – with Mr Cain denying it was torture.

Without naming waterboarding, Governor Rick Perry said that any techniques that might "save young American lives" would be approved if he were in the White House.

Waterboarding was expressly condemned by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. Mr Paul, a libertarian Texas congressman, described it as "illegal", "immoral" and "un-American".

"because we can"...

rich
The 0.1% only use small bills to light up their cigars... any more would be a waste of money...
We Are the 99.9%


fibbers inc & co...

fibbers

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have been accused of telling TV viewers blatant untruths about Barack Obama.

The candidates deny their TV commercials are deceitful and dishonest but both ads selectively quote the president to make it appear he is saying one thing when he is saying another.

The advertisements have been widely scorned for crossing a line from a longstanding practice of political campaigns pushing the truth to its limits, over to misrepresentation. One ad appears to show Obama admitting he will lose next year's election if he talks about the economy. The other has him calling American workers lazy.

Abbott only had himself to blame...

slippery slip...

...

In recent times, Peter Slipper's political career has tilted onto a decidedly slippery slope. Former Howard government minister Mal Brough has coveted Slipper's electorate of Fisher for some time and has been busily signing up new members to take his preselection away.

Slipper himself gave the Brough putsch a significant lift last week when he accompanied former Labor PM Kevin Rudd on a school tour in his Sunshine Coast electorate.

the crazy cyclophobic barry...

barry is a cyclophobe

Barry O'Farrell has vowed there will be no more "crazy" bike lanes on the city's main roads when he becomes premier. Has has also claimed that Clover Moore "deliberately set out to inconvenience motorists" with the city's 200km bike network. Click here to read the full story in the Daily Telegraph

http://www.bicyclensw.org.au/content/barry-o%E2%80%99farrell-no-more-%E2%80%9Ccrazy%E2%80%9D-bike-lanes

remember when...

populationMAD

from Gus's collection of stuff... Joyce could be the kid with the air sickness bag on Qantas...

defiance...

new speaker

politely speaking...

politely speaking

Me thinks that Jenkins resigned to go back and support Labor against an el stupido negative opposition...

no new protest songs...

the finger

Gus's picture of a stencil by annon.


rank and rank file

rankandfile...

Senior Liberals are closing ranks around Opposition Leader Tony Abbott after accusations by Liberal MPs that he is leaving them in the dark over important policy decisions.

In the Coalition party room yesterday, Victorian MP Kelly O'Dwyer and Paul Fletcher from New South Wales questioned the economic wisdom of retaining the Government's superannuation boost while, at the same time, dumping the mining tax that funds it.

The decision was made outside the party room by the Liberal leadership group - although key finance spokesman Andrew Robb was excluded from the phone hook-up a fortnight ago.

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