Abbotts foot in mouth thread...

[sixpoints]

I am an Australian of Scottish descent. In order to fulfill a desire to round out how I perceive my place in the world, I packed up and moved to Scotland and lived there for a number of years.
I find our P.M's comments in relation to the forthcoming Independence vote naive, embarrassing and unprofessionally partisan.
How a vote by a peoples for their own national determination can be described by a national leader as being against freedom and justice is deplorable.
It's the kind of inappropriate bombastic rhetoric you would expect from a tin pot African dictator, not from a first world leader.

[pietillidie]

LOL, he's becoming the global dial-a-quote for the humorous news section of the international media.

[David]

[swoop42]

[rocketronnie]

...And there are still a lot of morons out there who want to give him a second term. We aren't done with this reactionary idiot just yet.

[stui magpie]

[think positive]

[David]

Might need a spin-off thread:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-19/government-extending-olive-branch-to-china-after-palmer-tirade/5681118

He's just trolling as usual, of course, but if you look at this from an international perspective and remember that Clive is an elected representative whose party holds the balance of power, it becomes a little more embarrassing.

Seriously, who voted for this guy?

[pietillidie]

[3.14159]

From the Courier Mail.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-afraid-the-jocks-on-you-mr-abbott/story-fnihsr9v-1227029699167?nk=ef4737fe835f888b00af3c49fca9c4ed

I love Scotland. I was forged just across the water in Northern Ireland, but tempered on the streets of Glasgow, where I moved in my late teens and stayed for 12 years. My Ulster-Scots family is descended from gallowglasses, mercenary sailors who came from Scotland to fight on, and settle, the Antrim coast. I’ve got kilt legs and I know how to use them.

So I feel a kinship with the country and follow the independence debate very closely. The “no” vote made most sense, at first.
But all of that worry evaporated when I heard Tony Abbott say: “I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom.”

The Scots’ very catchcry is “freedom” – although Braveheart was just another prejudiced Australian, Mel Gibson, weighing in on the debate and getting it wrong. The Tories of the world haven’t learnt anything – if there’s one thing to get a Scot fired up, it’s a privileged, right wing Sassenach telling them what to do.
Abbott is valuable to Scotland but only as a cautionary tale, an object lesson in what can happen if an independent country goes off the rails. Enemies of justice are they, Tony? Scotland is a friend to gay people, to immigrants, to the disadvantaged and the poor. Scotland is justice. By contrast, Australia, with its new draconian laws, maltreatment of refugees, oppression of gay people, and a cruel caricature of a treasurer who clicks his heels and puffs cigars while looking down on the proletariat, has manifestly proved that it is not.
~~~

[HAL]

Give me an example.