The best thing about APEC Summits is seeing what ridiculous get-ups world leaders have to don for a photo op. More often than not, they have to wear something so bloody awful that it induces howls of “OH MY GOD!!! I WOULD NEVER BE SEEN DEAD IN THAT!!!” among ordinary folks like you and me, who will never been seen dead in these outfits because… well, let’s face it, we’re either too poor to rig an election or just simply born lucky.
Anyway, remember last year’s APEC Summit in Sydney and the embarrassingly god awful Drizabones that the world leaders had to pretend to be extremely thrilled to be seen in?
Renowned fashion icon John Howard made the Drizabone decision, “with counsel and good advice” from his wife Janette Howard and the APEC 2007 Taskforce. You remember Lil Johnny, right? This happy chappy:
Do you recall his haute couture sense now?
Anyway, yeah, that’s the guy who was responsible for those raincoats at APEC 07:
But really, were the Drizabones any better than the ponchos served at this year’s APEC Summit in Peru, I ask you?
The Drizabones don’t look so bad after all, do they?
Vote here.
Of course, the problem isn’t that they did the stunt at all, it’s that they severely embarrassed the NSW police. New testimony has also come to light about how they were caught.
They were only caught after they reached the edge of what they thought was the security zone, they were beginning to turn around anyway, and the police only apprehended them when Chas stepped out dressed as Osama.
Theoretically they could have kept on going past the third checkpoint (and how is this third checkpoint any better than the first two?) and caused a huge embarrassment – which is why the NSW police are so upset about this. It doesn’t prove their security measures are working at all, and they know it.
$300 million and defeated by a bunch of comedians from the ABC.
Nice.
Continuing the great tradition of climate-change-denying premature induction, Australia’s kraziest kolumnist:
Continuing the great tradition of shivering at protests over global warming:
About 100 school students from across Sydney have gathered to protest during the APEC summit, in defiance of authorities who asked them to stay in school…
They are protesting about a range of issues, including the Iraq War and climate change…
They walked for about half-an-hour, moving down Goulburn Street before returning to Belmore Park for more speeches as rain began to fall.
Same story in Brisbane, where soggy students marched in the same cause:
Ferny Grove, Runcorn, Kedron and Cavendish Road state high schools were also represented at the rally, organised by the socialist alliance Resistance.
Weather in Brisbane?
WINTRY conditions returned to much of Queensland yesterday, with the temperature in Brisbane 7C below average.
John Howard’s relentlessly banging on about how cool APEC will be.
APEC was “the most important international meeting ever to be held in Australia”, Mr Howard said, an opportunity for Australia to be paraded as a “modern, sophisticated, tolerant, multi-racial society”.
Um, after laughing out loud and spraying toast over the newspaper, here are some brief initial thoughts on The Man Of Steel and how those adjectives suit him…
Modern: Third world broadband.
Sophisticated: Look, where do I start?
Tolerant: Unless you’re a towelhead or a poof.
Multi-racial: But definitely not multicultural (the dirty ‘m’ word) because that would require tolerance of non-Anglo ways-of-life.
Now, I’m not saying that Australia and most Australians aren’t all of those things, but John Howard most definitely isn’t.
