Beyond the valley of the gongs, and into the valley of the cringe ... and whatever you do, have no shame ...
Don't even begin to think how astonishingly bizarre that on Australia day the Prime Minister wastes a gong on Phil the Greek, professional consort ...
There's a breathless hush in Canberra tonight
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light
An hour to play and the last man in
And it's just for the sake of an even more ribboned coat
And the selfish hope of a season's fame as a knight maker to kings and queens
So his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
Play up! Play up! Play the game and get another gong ...
Already the snickering and the sniggering has begun, with the twitter and the tweets, as the tone deaf one struts his parochial stage (a few sample tweets at Fairfax here):
It's the hubbie factor ... and don't you worry about the lack of Dames ... because there's nothing like a Dame ...
Yes, Phil the Greek way back in 1947 was created a Knight of the Order of the Garter (please don't worry about the garter), and in April 1952 the Queen created the Duke of Edinburgh a Knight of the Thistle and so on and endlessly so fawning forth, as you can read on his honours page here, until the fawning ponce from down under awarded him another useless gong ...
So what say the Royalists? Where do they stand? Are they celebrating and dancing in the streets that the man that carries more gongs than once thought humanly possible has been gonged again ...?
What's this, just in from David Flint?
Hang on, hang on, that's just a tirade of abuse directed at Campbell Newman for suing that dinkum little Aussie battler, Alan Jones, and a good mate of Flintey, and it seems Rabmling Strewthman's on the nose with everyone in the deep south these days ...
Lordy, lordy, how the world spins and turns and weaves and dodges, and what strange alliances these weird, alien, difficult times breed.
Now let's have some insightful, really super duper commentary:
Oh FFS ... here you go:
Get around behind Paulie ...
Yes it's yet another meandering column from Sheehan, now clearly in his dotage as he dribbles over dogs ...
And you know what, in an uncanny way, Sheehan echoes the sort of parochial, yearning for the home counties sort of nonsense exemplified by the PM:
I would vote for a border collie on the coat of arms.
That's right, a bloody working dog from the Anglo-Scottish border region (link designed to help Greg Hunt and Campbell Newman).
Give the man a bloody gong for prime lickspittle on colonial day down under ... he couldn't even manage to nominate a dinkum Australian cattle dog for the coat of arms ... here you go Greg Hunt and Campbell Newman ...
It's going to be that sort of day ... useless eastern suburbs of Sydney types ranting about which is the best tweed to wear ...
Australia, you might well be standing in it ...
Oh the cartoonists will be eating out on all this for days to come, and meanwhile First Dog got in a little early, and more First Dog here.
Yep, even First Dog couldn't pick the monstrous absurdity coming our way ...
ReplyDeleteAnd our governor-general, Sir Peter Cosgrove, will skip his first Australia Day in favour of flying to Saudi Arabia to "convey the condolences" of Australia following the death of King Abdullah.
How Abdullah miss out on a knighthood is beyond me.
Condolences. Bullshit. More like old baby burner sent as delegate to a meeting of the coalition of the willing against Russia. Fuck, even the CIA plant Poroshenko was there for the burial of Mahatma Abdullah.
Delete"Just call me Angus", maybe. But how about "You can call me ... Phil"?
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for Sir Dave, Sir Piers, Sir Gerald, etc, etc. He may even dub Sir CLINT (posthumous) for services to anti-Muslim hatred.
Hahaha DP, excellent April Fool joke! Oh, wait, it's still January.
ReplyDeleteGlenH, why wait until April 1...we can have a monthly "Fool's Day" just for Tones, maybe even a daily "Fool's Day".
DeleteSo funny. I am splitting my sides.
ReplyDeleteExcept for your slur on the working do Dorothy.
I have long believed the border collie and the kelpie with a blue heeler nipping its little tap- dancer's ankles should be on our coat-of-arms. In fact I would add the frilled necked lizard, the Tassie Devil and the dugong, the only native animals which please me.
But back to Sir Philip. The palace must have groaned.
I am totally convinced now that Peta Credlin is only Abbott's shield. I think he makes his own decisions. What must Team Australia be thinking this morning? Their heads must be throbbing from banging them on any hard surface close at hand.
I think our leader is a mischievous boy who likes to throw penny bungers.
Miss PP
No slur was intended on the noble dinkum Australian working dog, Miss PP, the pond having long admired the best of the breed working in the family up Tamworth way, but if we're going to celebrate boat arrivals on the coat of arms, let's hear it for the dingo.
DeleteI’m not concerned with Tony Abbott’s knighthood for Phil. Abbott will stay true to form and revoke it by Friday.
ReplyDeleteIt must now be revealed that Abbott is the mystery 7th. Python...always in the shadows, his wit and humour just that little bit slower than the front men..that is why it has taken so long for him to truly shine!
ReplyDeleteWell that is a thought.
DeleteI am going out to buy some stronger hooks and eyes for my corset. The belly laughs thus far have caused severe strain on the stays. I suspect 2015 will be a year of comedic riches.
Miss PP
Could Alexander Downer be made a Knight of the Garter new year?
DeleteSir Alexander Downet KGB - Knight of the Garter Belt?
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteIn awarding a scion of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg a tacky medal depicting two members of Australia's edible fauna, I think Abbott has finally acknowledged that his days as PM are very limited indeed.
This has all the hallmarks of a "fuck it I don't care what people think" moment. Any other explanation would have to stray to some sort of mental impairment.
Glad to have you back with us again and remember only take small bites of loonacy at the prescribed times.
All the best
Diddy Wrote
Abbott seems determined to prove he is beyond parody, with the Phil gong. Having recently mentioned White Australia politics in the 60s in an earlier post, I hark again to that era.
ReplyDeleteI was an avid reader of Oz Magazine then. It was one of the few respites from the stifling and predictable conformity of the print media then, albeit there were other little gems if you searched far enough such as Nation.
Oz once ran a very comprehensive feature on the Greek military junta then running the country on a model the Americans had long practised in Central and South Anerica. It had an appalling human rights record and was quite a dangerous place to be. From memory it had copious accounts of false imprisonment, torture and state murder. Amid all of these details, in Oz's irreverent and irrelevant way, it had a small picture of a grinning Prince Phil with the caption, "Another Greek Atrocity", which at the time I found hilarious. It offended some, as it liked doing.
How we come the full circle. After that flirtation with fascism (later to be followed by more refined versions with Thatcher-Murdoch) we now have Greece heading a public revolt against the bankers/brokers view of public administration. It's more complicated than I've described and will probably involve austerity. But there is a chance that it might be more fairly shared, which at least offers the people some hope.
Hi GD,
Deletethere is a Russian Proverb that goes; Cakes for some; knocks for the rest.
Every recent financial crisis has resulted in the same scenario, the International Banks and Hedge Funds which had corrupted the system in the first place, are paid off and austerity measures are enforced on the general populace in order to pay the bill.
This list of employees of The Vampire Squid, gives some idea to how the worlds economies are effectively controlled by the Financial Concerns in a "revolving door" movement of personnel who are supposed to regulate their former employers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_employees_of_Goldman_Sachs
No wonder the Greeks are furious.
DW
Yes, I'd agree with that, DW. I had some personal knowledge of the Marcos regime and its aftermath. Marcos, whatever his faults and they were many, was a sheer genius and creaming off other people's and public assets as well as any stray foreign money invested in the country.
DeleteIn those Cold War days he always made the right noises and like neighbour Suharto was considered a bulwark against communism and therefore a safe investment. And neither bankers nor corporations asked too many questions. Consequently Westinghouse was a big investor in a project to build a nuclear power station in an active volcanic area. Luckily it was stalled and not much happened before Marcos was ousted. By that time he'd squirreled away billions in Swiss bank accounts and other off-shore havens.
Succeeding governments have had investigative panels but when I last looked they'd only recovered a fraction of the billions taken. Yet for all that, the banks and most of the corporations were repaid, possibly not in full but fairly substantially.
The only way the government could afford it all was to squeeze the very people who had been screwed for so long by Marcos's looting. The point is, why should ordinary modest-income people have to pay for banking and corporate recklessness/
The Guardian reports:
ReplyDelete"But Houston defended the appointment of Prince Philip, who had “spent his whole life serving the community”. Houston acknowledged while the royal was not Australian, “he has had a deep interest in Australia”.
Oh yeah! And what has Phil ever done for us?
" Oh yeah! And what has Phil ever done for us?"...The extraordinary endowment of staying away from the country for as many years as possible!
Deletejaycee.
I've always thought Abbott belonged to a cargo cult. Now it's confirmed.
ReplyDeleteCult members of the island of Tanna in Vanuatu worship Prince Phil as a god.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_Movement
I hope Lucky Phil has his Viagra ready when Liz says "Arise Sir Phil".
ReplyDeleteDot is this blog part of the electronic graffiti Abbott is raving about? He says he wouldn't read wall graffiti so why would he take notice of social media? We all know Abbott couldn't care less what the public thinks as pointed out in the First Dog cartoon.
ReplyDeleteGood grief! Gee, when I heard this news I thought it must be April Fools Day. Abbott will be remembered for this asinine 'honour" which is so in keeping with his antiquated, obsolete and stupid character. He has embarrassed us all.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back Dot!!!
ReplyDeleteToday, there can be no doubt any longer, Tony Abbott has announced he has no interest at all in leading his country.
Too hard, too complicated, let someone else bloody do it.
"no interest in leading his country"?? Well, no, but this pom is the PM of another one.
DeleteGood to see you back Dot. And what a day! Couldn't have asked for better. Hopefully heralding (boom-boom) a change of fortune for the health of your good self.
ReplyDeleteThe same goes here. Onya Dot!
DeleteC'mon. Youse lot know that Al "Angus" Houston's being beknighted with a Captain's call's Osmium Duke of Edinburgh Award makes perfect sense.
ReplyDelete