What is the best way to get rid of Bill Shorten?

[Wokko]

I thought the article was fair enough, until it started espousing Labor making a jump to the left at the end. It's like the author didn't pay attention to the UK Election at all, where Red Ed, a boring man much like Shorten couldn't unseat a deeply unpopular conservative government or gain any traction against the not well liked PM. Labor needs to return to the days of being the workers party and drop the chardonnay socialists and tree hugging hippies that are left clinging on like barnacles to the ALP Ship. Most have long since departed to Greener shores, and the ALP wont succeed in winning them back, only further alienating the largely conservative working class. 'Howard's Battlers' are still voting Liberal, the ALP needs to win them back.

[pietillidie]

^Except Shorten is just another social climber with barely a leftist bone in his body. Sure, he has used a traditional ALP pathway to climb to power, but so did Bob Hawke, and he wasn't leftist either.

The bloke is a classic social climber, just as Ed Miliband, spending most of his days fraternising with the business right and old money, and riding the old power left as a vehicle to get somewhere. He has an MBA, while Miliband had a MSc in Economics. He probably couldn't pronounce the noun poststructuralism, let alone explain it. Meanwhile, Miliband's wife is best buddies with the wife of George Osborne, of all people.

Neither of them have anything to do with the 0.02% of society you come across on blogs. And what's with the rash of references to communism? Just where does this new red terror reside? Is there a revival somewhere the rest of the world has failed to notice?

In another thread, you called me a socialist when absolutely nothing about my competitionist economics or views on business, productivity, investment, technology, venture capital, entrepreneurialism, management and social hierarchy and power have any connection at all to "socialism".

Have you ever tried to calibrate these claims with the world as it actually is?

[Tannin]

Steady on there TLDR, I'm all in favour of sinking the boot into Wokko - it's practically the duty of a public-spirited citizen - but there is nothing in his post to object to. Your remarks re Hawke, Shorten and Miliband are spot on, however.

And Wokko, I reckon you are spot on. Labor has a lot of trouble trying to straddle the gap between its elitist technocrats (the likes of Shorten among them), its old-school leftists, and it's modernists and in consequence does none of these three themes well. It mightn't be a bad idea for Labor to focus strictly on one, or at most two of these three themes. Seeing as the Greens do modern thinking better, that is the obvious one to go.

This would result, of course, in Labor giving up all hope of governing in its own right, but we'd most likely wind up with a much healthier system with three major parties of roughly equal size, no one of them able to govern without some sort of support from one or another of the other two. That would be very good for the country.

[pietillidie]

^I'm more challenging Wokko's imaginary Red Ed and chardonnay socialists. There is just no specific ideological relationship between the likes of Miliband and Shorten, and that group, unless he is referring to very mainstream left and centre ideas.

On tactics, the problem is that I think you're drawing lines on paper that don't exist in people's heads, and therefore can't become the basis of any future left. Also, as a power centre, no party is going to divest as a matter of strategy, so the ALP is highly likely to continue to cling to thereabouts status within a context of gradual decline.

There is a complete mix of ideas out there beyond conservatism, and no financial incentive, authoritarian seat, or threat of social punishment to discipline it into a single unit. In the old days of the industrial left, the industrial hierarchy was able to discipline the left into a unit; but that industrial hierarchy is long gone. On the other hand, money still has the ability to discipline and punish.

The role of the "left" (as a political category) is now more as a protest vote and ameliorator. Meanwhile, Wokko forever confuses the powerful aggregating capabilities of the Internet with valid statistics, thinking the three American bloggers who said they saw communists yesterday just can't be wrong.

Edited.

[stui magpie]

Here's a very interesting article on Shorten. At least it will be apparently in 2 days time when it's published.

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-the-man-who-grew-good-at-manipulating-labors-machine-20150620-ghowyq

I personally find this bit most interesting.

[3.14159]

Lets see another smear campaign directed at a current Labor leader based on little more than a a vague "guilt by association" and followed up with a supposed link to a left-wing right wing brawl with-in a Student Union.
it's something needs to be looked at by the Royal (with cheese) Commission.

What do I think?
3 things.

1.The government is looking like a horses arse at the moment and any diversion from what's actually happening in real politics can only be a good thing for those of a right wing bent!
2. When is the Government going to get over petty party politics, start tackling the big issues and start telling us what it's vision for the future is?
3. The post should be on the Bored board or posted your own D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F thread.

cheers.

[stui magpie]

[3.14159]

I know you like reading comic books but I gave up join the dots before grade 3* and starting reading serious literature like Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel)!

*Joining the dots can only leave you drawing some-one else's conclusions.
I'd rather paint my own picture, write my own narrative and come to my own conclusions!

[stui magpie]

Hah, love it. Put a few facts up and it's bashing. LOL.

Ah, thank Grod we're all different, it would be seriously boring otherwise.

[3.14159]

[King Monkey]

Just wait a little bit.
He'll be forgotten about as quickly as you can say "Simon Crean".

[3.14159]

I don't want him as leader either.
What this country needs is leader with a vision for Australia's future* and Bill Shortening isn't that man.
What I don't want is him brought down by gutter politics by a Government that is plumbing new depths playing the man and avoiding the REAL issues.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-19/cassidy-just-when-you-thought-politics-couldnt-sink-lower/6557124

As I said, where is the vision?

*An obudsman to hear claims of failing health due to those blot on the landscape wind-turbines?
I live not 5 k's from one!
Every-one (with 2 exceptions, a hypercondriac serial doom sayer and former board member from Shell Australia) I know that lives under and around them have absolutely no problem with them and are actually proud to have clean energy produced right in front of them!

This Government seems intend on appeasing the whacky so why not appoint a senate hearing to determine if the world is indeed flat like our soon to be ex P.M seems to think.

[Dave The Man]

Can’t be that bad as he is a Pies Man

[Dave The Man]

[David]