With the Donald reasserting the divine right of kings (and emperors, seeing as he's a Napoleon lover?), the pond was forced to sin-bin prattling Polonius to Sunday on several grounds.
For one, his reptile splash seriously missed the point.
It's reasonable to expect those standing for office to have allegiance to the rules and regulations (in this case constitutional) involved in standing for office - or at least to understand them and to act on them, in a way that apparently befuddled and confused several Greens ...
But what to make of "it's reasonable to expect those standing for office to have allegiance to one nation"?
Uh huh. How about the office of head of state?
As usual with Polonius, it was a slow burn, with much prattling, preening and statements of the bleeding obvious before getting to the crunch ...
And around that point, Polonius jumped the shark and nuked the fridge, as he so frequently does ...
Well the pond can play that game of distraction too.
The pond voted 'no' in the 1999 referendum, on the basis that Australian voters should be given some sort of right to have a say in the process of installing the Australian head of state. Almost any sort of precaution could have been taken - rigorous limitation of the role, pre-selection of candidates by parliamentarians - but that wasn't little Johnny's intent. He wasn't interested in compromise, a way forward, or for the Australian people involved, and Malware was such a fuckwitted wanker and useless tosser, little Johnny got what he wanted. He wanted to fuck it up, and so he did ... thereby adding the republic to the NBN as chief amongst Malware's many crimes ... done like a Sunday dinner by little Johnny, and in the matter of the NBN, by the onion muncher ...
But back to the absurdity of Polonius's point. It's not to do with whether Australia becomes a republic.
It's to do with the existential absurdity of blathering on about it being reasonable to expect that office holders are the citizens of just one nation, while everybody in the country still swears allegiance to an alien Pom ...
Dress her down to complete and irredeemable irrelevance as Polonius might, a British citizen remains Australia's head of state, a public office, but apparently it is unreasonable to expect that office to be fulfilled by a citizen of just one nation ...
It wasn't so long ago that the pond could have also been banging on about appeals to the British Privy Council, because it took until 1986 to shut down the last vestiges of that nonsense (Greg Hunt it here).
By one of those rich absurdities of life, many still here amongst us were born as British citizens, with the idea of Australian citizenship only finally established in a formal sense in January 1949 - wiki it here ...
This is not to defend the Greens who made simple, easily preventable mistakes - the pond would have chortled just as hard if the onion muncher had been caught out (and devotees of that birther yarn are convinced the British authorities have conspired to help him out).
But it is perfectly right and proper to remain bemused in a post-ironic fashion at the notion that fidelity to the country is essential for office, while the country still has a Pom serving as the highest officer in the highest office in the land ...
For a start, sorting that out would put an end all sorts of Royal nonsense of the Malware kind ...
Speaking of the divine right of kings, the Devine was out and about this day showing exactly why an interest in Royalty requires an infinite capacity for stupidity, and a mindset that never moved beyond the 1950s ...
Oh ye ancient cats and royalist dogs, will there never ben an end to it ...though the different google splashes hinted at a certain confusion and ambiguity ...
Say what? The Devine's heard the pond's call about having a Pom as the highest office holder in the land and gone full bore Republican? Charles should not end on the throne, Charles should never be King?
Naturally the pond got it completely wrong. It was just a chance to flog more Tony Robbins' nonsense - banner ads must be going cheap at the Terror - and rehash old tedious Royal memories ... of a kind done to death, and also done with a lot more flair and style in shows like The Queen, with Helen Mirren ...
Ye ancient cats, was that in 2006 and still in 2017 the Devine is banging on about it?
There must be some other reason for this nonsense being regurgitated by the Devine?
Oh wait, here it comes, News Corp has tree killers to flog, and the Devine is just the crowd warmer, the warm-up comedian hired to get the crowd in the mood ...
Sample gags: "Your mama is so dumb she thinks Taco Bell is a Mexican phone company," "Your average Polonius is so dumb he thinks the Queen is a dinkum Aussie, " "Your Devine would have been really handy promoting Hitler's diaries" ...
Oh fuck, here we are back in women's magazines land, which everyone knows should only be read when standing in line at the check-out.
If you want to understand the generational trauma inflicted on children by parents who hated each others guts, yet stay living together because it was the right thing to do, just hop into a time machine and re-visit the 1950s ...
Oh okay, the pond woke up grumpy, because the clock radio clicked on with James Carleton blathering to a Jensenist on God Forbid ... even worse, that was followed by a loon insisting that sexuality was binary, and homosexuality was unbiblical, and so wicked and so worthy of an eternity of hell, and so forth and so on, and yet when confronted with the scientific evidence that there were shades of grey, saw it as an irrelevant distraction ... and yet still Carleton served up soft ball after simpering soft ball, and still they pondered why faith in ancient camel-herder thinking might be becoming a hard sell ... because sounding like Daesh on the matter of homosexuality is such a sensible position for hardliners to take ...
By the time the pond had put on a load of washing and hit the shower, it was still fuming, and then there's the Devine using divorce as a rod for Chuck's back ...
You cannot trash your wedding vows without suffering consequences?
So a third of the country is going to suffer consequences, apart from all the usual, which is what to do with the property, and the emotional damage and the hurt and the pain, and the children who had nothing to do with the split but take on the blame?
Data here, but why should the pond be surprised? It's just another example of the Devine heading back, not to the 1950s, but to the ancient days of the camel herders wanting to smote mightily and hurl stones ...
Hmm, death for Chuck. Is it time for a stoning? It would sort out that head of state issue ...
More stonings at the Skeptic's Bible here, but suddenly the pond was in a good Sunday mood ...
Yep, stone Chuck to death, and put a dinkum Aussie adulterer on the throne and all would be well ...
Meanwhile, in the land of the devine right of kings, the adulterer in the highest office in the land is enjoying himself as a caring, sharing dad ...
"many still here amongst us were born as British citizens, with the idea of Australian citizenship only finally established in a formal sense in January 1949"
ReplyDeleteVery, very many of us, DP, since:
"Throughout the 1960s, Australian citizens were still required to declare their nationality as British. The term ‘Australian nationality’ had no official recognition or meaning until the Act was amended in 1969 and renamed the Citizenship Act. This followed a growing sense of Australian nationalism and the declining importance for Australians of the British Empire. In 1973 the Act was renamed the Australian Citizenship Act. It was not until 1984 that Australian citizens ceased to be British subjects."
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs187.aspx
It may be worth noting that the distinction between 'subject' and 'citizen' is that a subject is wholly the property of the monarch of the day and has no civil rights whereas a citizen has a distinct identity that does entail civil rights.
But of course there's no need for dual citizenship for somebody to have dual loyalty; just inquire after Kim Philby for example.