Thanks, Daily Telegraph, for this godawful photoshopping.

I wonder how long they’ve been dying to use that one?

UPDATE:

While perusing the Daily Telegraph online after the Budget to see if there were any other terrible photoshopping jobs, not only did I come across a claim by Doc Nelson that Labor’s first Budget in over a decade is “bringing back a left-wing agenda” (you serious, Doc?) and Julie Bishop’s claim that the Budget is a “war on wealth” (you and your poor rich friends, my condolences), I came across some piss-funny sulking from the wonderful Peter Costello, after his doorstop pre-Budget media interview this morning.

Snippet:

He bristled when Sky News political editor David Speers suggested that he knew the speculation [about Costello’s leadership intentions] was damaging the [Liberal] party.

“Oh, do I? Well you say it is. Why don’t you interview yourselves?” Mr Costello said, putting on a mock deep broadcast voice. “You know, ‘David Speers - it’s damaging.’ ‘Is it?’ ‘I say it is.’ ‘No it’s not.’

“I’ve got to say to you that after dealing with you people for 20 years I just don’t feel that I have to be at your beck and call.”

Other journalists pointed out that he had called the doorstop.

But it was veteran Fairfax journalist Michelle Grattan who drew his ire when she said he appeared sensitive on the topic.

“Oh I’m sensitive am I Michelle? I’m sensitive,” he said to the reporter.

“I’m standing here looking so sensitive aren’t I? Furrowed brow, worried - how sensitive do I look Michelle? You ought to go and get a new prescription.”

Michelle Grattan wears glasses.

UPDATE II:

The Daily Tele goes from bad to worse with their oh-so-funny puns on Wayne Swan’s name.

American politics is just so interesting, innit?

Former US congressman Bob Barr has announced plans to run for president on the Libertarian Party’s ticket, in a move some analysts say could hurt Republican presumptive nominee John McCain.

This is bad news for McCain. As pointed out in the article, Barr will steal those conservative votes that McCain desperately needs and is relying on, votes from conservatives who aren’t too happy with the Republican nominee for various reasons.

Barr, who has hired Ross Perot’s former campaign manager, acknowledged that some Republicans have tried to discourage him from running. But he said he’s getting in the race to win, not to play spoiler or to make a point.

It would take a miracle for Barr and the Libertarian Party to win. Highly unlikely, and I’m sure he knows it. So, he’s not in it to win, he’s in it to spoil or make a point. Has to be. Don’t lie, Barr.

However,

“I’ve heard from Americans from all walks of life … they want a choice,” he said at a news conference in Washington. “They believe that America has more and better to offer than what the current political situation is serving up to us.”

Admirable in trying to give Americans a choice. Democracy and all that, of which the US in the past 8 years has been trying to spread to other parts of the world, not always with much success.

So, does this look good for Obama (or Hillary)?

Well, not really. Bob Barr could just as likely steal those votes from Obama (or Hillary), not just from McCain. There are also still a lot of American voters pining for the other libertarian, Republican Ron Paul, who is still campaigning (I had to check, I’m shocked he’s still going; you certainly rarely hear anything about him campaigning in the primaries), so it would be interesting to see just how disastrous Bob Barr may be for both the Republicans and the Democrats.

Still, if it did come down to a McCain vs Obama battle,  as seems most likely, Obama should be wary by the latest poll showing that McCain is still a strong candidate despite the lack of support for Bush (and, effectively, the Republican Party).

In hypothetical general election head-to-heads, Obama leads McCain by slim 51 to 44 percent margin, with the public split 49 percent for Clinton to McCain’s 46 percent.

Can I just say, COME ON OBAMA!

Oh, and bring on the election already.

They can’t win elections, they’re barely functioning, and now comes the news that no-one in the party can even destablise an already shaky leadership properly.

The blog can be read here, and the men behind it can be contacted here.

What’s interesting is that the blog appears to have been leaked to that site from the inside, because the “edit widget” buttons are still there.

Nice work. You can’t even leak properly.

One of the things that most Australians would agree on is that this country should have a decent public health system that is more than just a safety net, with a private health system available for those who choose to use it and are capable of paying. We shudder at the thought of an “Americanised” health system where one’s access to the health system is contingent upon the ability to pay.

The Howard Liberal government (the party of “choice”, remember) tried very hard in its eleven years to maximise the number of people with private health insurance by making it uneconomical to do otherwise. The taxpayer now subsidises 35% of private health insurance premiums, there is a penalty for not taking out health insurance before the age of 31, and taxpayers without private health pay a sizeable levy towards Medicare when they earn over $50,000.

But the Rudd government today announced that the Medicare levy threshold would be increased for the first time since 1997.

Under the current system, middle-income earners pay an average levy of $600 if they are not privately insured and the changes will see the threshold increased to $100,000 for singles and $150,000 for couples.

Ms Roxon says the threshold has not been adjusted to keep pace with wages since it was set in 1997.

“At that time when the threshold was $50,000 a year, average wages were well under that at around $34,000 a year,” she said.

“Now you can be earning less than the average wage and still be hit by the Howard government’s threshold. We don’t think that’s fair.”

Of course the opposition has opposed the move which they see as some sort of bizarre reverse discrimination.

Federal opposition leader Brendan Nelson says the Rudd government’s Medicare levy reforms are a cruel “con”.

Dr Nelson said the move to double the salary required before a taxpayer without private health insurance pays the levy would only have negative affects.

“There is absolutely no doubt that as a result of this fewer people will take up private health insurance,” Dr Nelson told reporters in Sydney today.

[…]

“The pensioners and battlers of this country, some of whom used to go without food to pay for their private health insurance, are now going to find they have to pay higher premiums,” Dr Nelson said.

I’m sorry, Brendan, but if the pensioners and battlers of this country are forced to go without food to pay for private health insurance because they’ve been given no choice by the Howard government then your party should be ashamed of itself. The health funds are starting to suggest that Medicare should be means tested but clearly many Australians who can’t afford health insurance already feel like they have no choice.

Dr Brendan Nelson, leader (sic) of the opposition, loves to remind punters and journalists at every opportunity that he is a medical doctor. The way that he casually drops anecdotes from his practicing days into interviews and speeches has become a bit of a joke, but this exchange from a Sky TV interview is pure, solid gold in its patheticness.

SPEERS: But looking back, how much did the divisiveness between the Costello and Howard camp, camps, in the final stages of the Howard Government contribute to the loss?

DR NELSON: Well look I’m not going to get a, you know, a retrospect-o-scope out on that.

“Let me just have a listen with my retrospect-o-scope.”
“Thankyou, Dr Nelson.”
“No worries. Now take a deep… did you know I’m a doctor?”

Will you please just give up the keys to the Lodge and fuck off?

Just like people who aren’t satisfied with one birthday a year and have to have 13 of them, the unceremoniously dumped former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, can’t accept that it’s over. His grand farewell tour of the world rolled on into its sixth month with another farewell gig in Sydney last night.

In his speech, to party faithful in Sydney last night, Mr Howard also said that despite the “propaganda” of the Labor Party, his government had been kinder to the poor, the underprivileged and low-income earners than the Hawke and Keating governments before it.

[…]

Mr Howard was speaking at a tribute dinner organised in his honour to raise funds for the NSW Liberal Party.

I’m not even going to comment on that.

But here’s a bit of unintentional hilarity from Annabel Stafford at The Age.

The 1200-strong crowd, which included Liberal heavyweights (sic) such as Dr [Brendan] Nelson…

LOL!

Remember John Howard’s trademark niggling over those pesky words such as “sorry”, “regret”, “apology” and “responsibility”? Here’s Johnny on indigenous reconciliation.

JOHN HOWARD: “I committed the Government to pursuing reconciliation the night that the Government was re-elected in October of last year. I believe that this resolution will make a huge contribution towards the cause of reconciliation. It does not, as a resolution, impose a blame or a guilt on present generations for past misdeeds. But it does recognise the truth about Australia’s history.

MATT PEACOCK: It doesn’t say sorry.

JOHN HOWARD: No, well…

MATT PEACOCK: Is that important?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, no, what is important, Matt, is what is positive out of what was passed yesterday. I am not, like Aden Ridgeway, I am not going to get hung out about, hung up about this or that word or this or that expression.

And here’s Johnny on interest rate rises.

Well, I said I was sorry they’d occurred. I don’t think I actually used the word apology. I think there is a difference between the two things … I think we’ve been through that debate before, haven’t we, in the context of something (else) … I very much regret the interest rate rise. I’m sorry it’s happened. This word game about apologies and sorry has been invented by the Labor Party to divert attention from the fact they don’t have an economic policy to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates.

New Liberal leader (sic) Dr Brendan Nelson has clearly taken lessons in the Howard art of word manipulation judging from this effort on the topic of inflation.

The fact is that we do not have an inflationary crisis. What we do have is an inflationary challenge that needs to be addressed and it needs to be faced.

Oh, I see. It’s a challenge and not a crisis. But why then, Bren-doc, does this challenge need to be addressed and faced? That sounds like a crisis to me.

There’s no inflationary crisis but clearly there’s an inflationary challenge that needs to be addressed. And in addressing that inflationary challenge it’s important that we take into account that our economy is slowing. We’ve had two official rate rises from the Reserve Bank since November last year. We’ve also had increases in interest rates from the banks outside official movements. We’ve got the full impact of the global liquidity crisis yet to affect and wash through the Australian economy.

Whoa! Settle down, Brendan! It’s a global liquidity challenge, not a global liquidity crisis.

Congratulations to GrodsReader Skeptic who has recently given birth to twin girls (or at least his partner has.) Skeptic is seeking suggestions from other GrodsReaders “as to the appropriate lefty indoctrination I should now be following to make sure the little ones are participating in group thinking and other socialist-related activities?”

My advice is to ensure that the girls’ first non-breast food is a latte. Leave your advice in comments.

The Editor, John Surname, Jeremy Sear, Keri, Chuck A. Spear and Craig discuss:

* Teh gays
* Cab driver and teacher strikes
* Austrian hostages in basements
* SBS hidden cameras
* Ronaldo’s man-whore problem
* Bill Heffernan vs. Justice Kirby in the GrodsThink naked cagefight

** Because Ant Rogenous is using all the bandwidth to download instructional Fleshlight videos use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

 

 GrodsThink 15 (6 May 2008) [32:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The West Australian has responded to the Buswell chair affair with a little get-even dirt-digging. The West Oz’s journos had to delve back to 2004 to find anything of note: a boozy ALP function where Labor premier Alan Carpenter allegedly lifted the top of MP Jaye Radisich and exposed her bra.

‘Commenting‘ on the story, Andrew Bolt just can’t help himself and engages in the kind of base sexism and personal denigration we’ve come to expect from certain low-brow bloggers. He inserts the above pic as ‘ftgg.bmp‘ (as all sub-editors would know filenames for pictures are rarely random; draw your own conclusions what it might mean) and captions it with:

I suspect that [WA Labor MP Jaye] Radisich would certainly have noticed had [WA premier Alan] Carpenter attempted the job of lifting her top.

The Boltmeister then goes on to suggest that Carpenter’s alleged bra-lifting is actually worse than Buswell’s chair-sniffing because it is more “direct”, whereas Buswell was just “alarmingly inventive”. How cute. And all this moralising is predicated on an event that Carpenter denies, Radisich has never mentioned let alone complained about, and staff at the aforementioned function apparently did not witness. Not that either Bolta or the West Oz are likely to let the facts get in the way of a good smear job.

I’ve been reading over the media reports of the new pay deal for teachers that has brought The Editor almost to the brink of orgasm - and, as expected, some things don’t add up. According to Victorian politicians the deal makes the state’s teachers “the highest paid in the country”, and The Age’s little insert certainly seems to verify this:

State-by-state teacher salaries:
Maximum for a classroom teacher
Victoria - 2007: $65,414, 2008: $75,500
NSW - 2007: $72,454, 2008: $75,352
Queensland - 2007: $69,225, 2008: $71,994
South Australia - 2007: $68,422, 2008: $68,422
West Australia - 2007: $67,446, 2008: $71,206
ACT - 2007: $71,767, 2008: $74,279
Northern Territory: 2007: $70,047, 2008: $72,849

Sounds good, classroom teachers getting a $10k raise straight-up this year. Yet when you read the fine print that’s not actually how it works: the additional $10k will be phased in over three years: 4.9% in the first (about $3,200, taking them to about $68,600) and 2.7% in the second and third years of the agreement. That still leaves them well below NSW teachers at any given time.

In 2010 Victorian teachers’ pay will certainly overtake NSW teachers’ salary rates - but they’ll be the NSW salary rates of 2008 - and it’s highly likely that NSW teachers will have renegotiated their own agreement by then (it expires this year). Brumby and Pike’s claim that Victorian teachers will be the best-paid in Australia looks to be smoke-and-mirrors.

But it’s not all doom and gloom - The Editor gets $1000 to put on the bar at the Grodscorp Christmas Party. Huzzah!

UPDATE

According to the press today I am wrong, that this $10k pay jump is instantaneous and those scumbag Maoist teachers are actually getting 33-38% over the life of the agreement (sounds a bit far-fetched if you ask me). But the government is still sticking to its 4.9% thang. We’ll probably have to rely on The Ed to give us a clearer picture once he receives his new pay scales (if he has sobered up by then). 

Also, Zombie Mao informs us that the Oz is informing us that this will be the end of the fiscal world as we know it.

Details are still sketchy but news is spreading around the teacher gossip network like bird flu. It seems that teachers — who have been locked in negotiations with a government that didn’t really want to negotiate for 18 months — have successfully told education minister Bronwyn Pike to stick her sub-inflation offer of 3.5% per year and instead grant Victorian teachers (the worst paid in the country) pay parity with their NSW colleagues. With virtually no productivity trade-offs teachers have been offered payrises of between $5000 and $10,000 with a John Howard-style $1000 once off bribe payment thrown in for good measure. Again, I’m not sure of the exact details but will update this post when they are officially released.

UPDATE: From ABC Online

The Premier John Brumby says the salary of a graduate teacher will rise by about $5,000 and senior teachers will get a $10,000 pay rise.

“We’ll make the classroom teachers the highest paid anywhere in Australia,” he said.

Mr Brumby, says they gave the teachers more than the original offer of 3.25 per cent because the union has agreed to boost productivity by spending more time with students.

“They will get an extra 10 minutes of tuition everyday.”

The Education Union’s Mary Bluett says top teachers will get a 15 per cent pay rise and graduate teachers 9.5 per cent over three years.

“The salary will actually reflect the importance of the job of teaching,” she said.

“That would do a lot to retain the teachers that we have here in the state.”

Under the deal, three of the four pupil-free days will be moved to before the start of the school year and teachers will get a one-off $1,000 cash bonus.

UPDATE II: Check out the ABC’s apostrophe problems.

I blame teachers.

Say what you like about compulsory voting (and for the record I’m pro), but when less than half of the voters of London bother to vote for the person they want to govern seven million people with a multi-billion pound budget for the next four years then you can’t help but conclude that “I don’t give a fuck”, rather than Boris Johnson, was the winner on the day.

For all the crap we give Dr. Brendan Nelson, you have to love these pictures of him on the Liberal Party website:

“What? A phone call? Are you sure? Is it a prank? No? I’ll take it!”

“Hello? No, I’m sorry. There is no Hugh Jarse here. But I’ll talk to you anyway. I went on a listening tour, and nobody listened….hello? Helloooooo? Hmm, must be a bad connection”

Stop the presses! All is well in the Liberal Party.

Christopher Pyne is full of confidence for the future:

Mr Pyne’s monologue - proclaimed in a voice many decibels louder than the hubbub in the dining room at the Jewel of India - made it clear he regarded his leader’s Gippsland strategy as a joke.

“Gippsland will be our Aston!” Mr Pyne declared theatrically.

Good for you, Liberals! You do your darndest to win that by-election!

“First Gippsland, then the Lodge!” Mr Pyne continued, parodying his leader.

That’s the spirit!

It was impossible for anyone else in the crowded restaurant, including this reporter, not to overhear Mr Pyne’s remarks, so loudly were they delivered.

It’s terrific that Pyne is so full of confidence and enthusiasm! Why, he wants to share it with an entire restaurant! He wants to share it with the nation!

Never stop your good work, Christopher Pyne. Your party needs more men like you.

Thanks to Steve.