Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Nurse Grattan With the Happy Pills

From a Michelle Grattan column of a few days ago, the latest example of Blair's Law:

MANY readers will recall Margo Kingston, a deft hand at investigative reporting and a pioneer of interactive journalism through her Webdiary. Margo left the trade a while ago and is studying nursing, interested in specialising in palliative care.

But last week, watching from afar the AWU affair unfolding, she leapt back into the fray with an online article. She remembered what many of us, in the heat of this slush fund battle, had forgotten. Tony Abbott has had his own slush fund experience, not all of it happy.

Is it too late for Grattan to take up a career in hospice nursing? All the bent words she peddles on behalf of our PM suggest she has a genuine gift for bringing comfort to those on their way out.

25 comments:

  1. The Old and Unimproved DaveDecember 4, 2012 at 4:58 PM

    If any pathology tests require the blood to be curdled, Michelle's your gal.....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know MG is not a young or attractive woman; but couldn't she come up with a better photo than that one? She looks like what I imagine Maryloon Sheephead to look like.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Walter Plinge of Port LincolnDecember 4, 2012 at 5:47 PM

    "...is studying nursing, interested in specialising in palliative care."

    I interpret this as meaning she is doing a Cert IV -- what was previously call s nurse's aide. This is the course you do when you can't manage the degree course due to a lack grey matter and application. You end up in aged care (coyly referred to here as palliative care).

    Div 2 nurses are paid at bottom of the scale. It's the job you do when you can't get any other job. Really hard work too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. According to Grattan, it's the AWU "affair". To Oakes it's an "affair", too. On the ABC it mostly been the AWU "Saga". To real reporters it's the AWU "scandal". I'd say the "gallery seniors" should be chatting to Margo about something quite different: their retirement. I don't know what to suggest for the ABC. Euthanasia perhaps?

    Pedro of Adelaide

    ReplyDelete
  5. I read this on the Age website the other day; now I do think Michelle has been a touch obviously biased in favour of Labor for some time but she is an experienced political commentator who has (with many) a considerable professional reputation in this country - but this was simply drivel.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Will Margo's palliative care skills be of any use in helping terminal newspapers in crossing the Styx?

    The Irish Lion

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Margo left the trade a while ago and is studying nursing, interested in specialising in palliative care."

    Wow. That is the stuff of nightmares.

    Nevertheless, well done Margo and Michelle. Of course! It was Tony Abbott with the dodgy slush fund.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Grattan, Kingston...add Fran Kelly to that brew and you have a frightening threesome:

    First Witch
    Round about the cauldron go;
    In the poison'd entrails throw.
    Toad, that under cold stone
    Days and nights has thirty-one
    Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
    Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

    ALL
    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

    Second Witch
    Fillet of a fenny snake,
    In the cauldron boil and bake;
    Eye of newt and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
    Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
    Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
    For a charm of powerful trouble,
    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

    ALL
    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

    Third Witch
    Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
    Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
    Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
    Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
    Liver of blaspheming Jew,
    Gall of goat, and slips of yew
    Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
    Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
    Finger of birth-strangled babe
    Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
    Make the gruel thick and slab:
    Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
    For the ingredients of our cauldron.

    ALL
    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

    Second Witch
    Cool it with a baboon's blood,
    Then the charm is firm and good.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Surely, it would be the sprightly patients bringing comfort to Grattan and mopping her fevered brow.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Michelle appears to be nearer to taking up residence in some sort of care facility, rather than working in one. She appears to be rapidly losing whatever cognitive abilities she once possessed. Her rambling writings make me think of those unfortunate people who can remember all that happened many years ago, but have no idea of what is currently going on in the world.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I remember clearly Abbott's slush fund. Just about every week there is a discussion here lamenting his lack of ethics & even greater lack of political courage (in that matter).

    Mark Latham both proved himself a better man, and got the measure of Tony Abbott's lack of character in this matter, when he said "In Australia we defeat our political opponents NOT by jailing them, but by putting superior policies to the people & winning at the ballot box."

    There are a few CRUCIAL differences between Abbott's slush fund & Gillard's:

    1/. Those who put money into Abbott's fund knew it was going into a "Jail Political Opponents fund", as opposed to believeing it was going into a "Liberal Party Workplace Reform fund"
    2/. The money in Abbott's fund really was used for the stated purpose (i.e. to jail a political opponent), as opposed to the money being stolen by Tony Abbott & used by him to pain the town red.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps you could let some of us know that the Abbott slush fund, which apparently gave no money for the legal action mentioned – and was THAT the action that sent Hanson to trial by the way? - was anything other than what even Grattan says it was ”aimed at a broad political purpose [the destruction of Hanson and One Nation]”? Only a political fool (or something else) wouldn’t realise what a danger the agrarian socialist-type populism was to the Liberal party when the Asian Invasion scare was on? Hell knows the Qld country party types only seemed to have Ron Boswell as their enemy then and, whilst I had some sympathy for Hanson at the beginning, there is no doubt in my mind that she would eventually do nothing but give a free kick to those who would swamp us with multicultural rubbish by having the field swept clean for them by the extremists who quickly gathered around her. And the ones which now gather, inexorably to Katter. The old League of Rights cranks and now LaRouchites are there with yet another chance to influence things and who benefits from that? If people got OUT of the pub once in a while they might realise that.
      Anyone who says that Latham is a better man at anything has to be pissed. Take the Pledge will you? Latham even dudded one of his father’s friends who had helped pay his education by going against him for personal factional reasons and then tried to assuage his own pathetic and disgusting behaviour by sending cash around to try and make himself feel better by ‘repaying’ that money. Almost (but NOT) as bad as the family-friendly Keating announcing to Anita – in front of guests at a dinner ‘party’ - that they were separating! The Latham who is as shocked as Captain Renault about allegations against Gillard caused by sexism yet who can brush off calling a national journalist a whore in parliament.
      The facts are that the terrible husk of the once-important Australian Labor Party has now selected for leader three times in a row people who are not only unfit to be named alongside great leaders of the past, but some of whom will go down as the most unfit people for leadership of any party anywhere. To see someone defending Gillard, the moll attached to the arm (and to the bed – on call) to two of caricatures of mob/union leaders from USA legend is also pathetic.

      Delete
    2. Tsk tsk tsk, M Ryutin seems to have "rationale" and "method" confused.

      All that you say is what Tony Abbott & his co-conspirators should have put to the people, and allowed the people to decide at the ballot box.

      Australia is a democracy. Jailing political opponents is not the way to defeat them.

      Credit where it is due, thus I stand by my comments re Mark Latham. For in this matter, he is right.

      Delete
  12. Michelle Grattan take up a new career?

    What, from beyond the grave? She could speak to the ouija boards down at Pravda I suppose..

    ReplyDelete
  13. One look at Nurse Grattan and the end couldn't come soon enough...

    ReplyDelete
  14. Ah, Michelle, the Florence Nightingale of the Labor party. Mopping the brows of the feverish shell shocked voters while shuffling from cot to bed, with her scared features and her very small candle illuminating and frightening the bewildered. A sort of old mother Hubbard, a nurse-maid to all those unruly children who need some motherly guidance. Pity she talks such crap.

    ReplyDelete
  15. PhillipGeorge(c)2012December 4, 2012 at 11:18 PM

    Pauline Hanson was just one more crucified dissident and now everyone is paying, and paying, and paying, for multiculturalism; have you no idea the Greens are just pantheists re-branded? What is carbonophobia, and damophobia, and normalophobia, and monoculturalismophobia and "make sacrifices to save goddess Gaia's mother earth"? Prof, Rudyard Kipling predicted the end of an Empire. GK Chesterton predicted modernism would lead to madness. CS Lewis predicted men minus chests. Gutted. Redundant through scientific principles. Naturalism destroys what is natural.

    Prof. Every ideology is a hopelessly over simplistic reductionism. The French had their revolution and never recovered from it. Multiculturalism was/is a revolution in slow motion. The naive collectivist masonic ideology was a watershed in self effacement, and a boon for historical revisionism.

    You think when the wicked witch of the west is gone you'll be back in Kansas and the "freemarket" will fluff your pillows?

    been wondering why Billy Nudgel was so mad with you Prof? A monied up self funded retiree intellectual no less - conservative freemarkets man. Seems he blames you for the above. The breakup of a generation's hard work. A Commonwealth not sold to the highest bidder but broken into bits and sold to every bidder; for every and any worthless junk bond instrument on the planet, all offers accepted for value, everything will be sold - and everything left over is at the encumbrance of the original owners/ with interest on management and brokerage fees payable immediately. Which reminds me Prof, some of those non producing wind turbines are getting a bit old already and will need to have maintenance and leasing costs passed on to those who never derived any benefits from them whatsoever. Sleep well people. There's carbon accumulating under the bed. Dream of Kansas. The Piper may not be back till the day after tomorrow.

    Ps. Mindanao's and Syria's citizens are possibly predicting more civil war - now why is that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "The French had their revolution and never recovered from it."~Phillip George

      So you're saying that an absolutist monarchy is a good thing then.

      Charles the Simple, Charles the Lame, Charles the Bad, Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat and Charles the Mad have all been Kings of France.

      Nicknames of French Monarchs included: Louis the Baboon, Louis the Foolish, Louis the Universal Spider, Louis the Fat and Louis the Lazy.

      So you see with monarchs you're stuck with whatever pops out of the Queen's womb, rather than electing an appropriate candidate.

      CE

      Delete
    2. PhillipGeorge(c)2012December 5, 2012 at 1:30 PM

      I shouldn't presume you aren't posting from Washington DC, that no-number non-state, you might be here in Victoria, in which case you would be both in the Monarchy and a state of puerile denial. Interesting that nick names should fixate you however. I'd lay a British silver crown wager you got the odd nickname when you were at school.

      I'm not here to sanitize any single year of anywhere's history. Irreducible complexity is a tautology.

      Delete
  16. Grattan describes Abbott's 'Jesuitical rationalisation'. Today she talks about Abbott's 'hero', Bob Santamaria.

    Abbott = Catholic = icky?

    ReplyDelete
  17. So now there's not even a pretense of being impartial. While this was a heavy-handed exercise by Abbott, It says more about his pugnacity than anything else. The money was clearly used as donors expected it to be.

    To draw a comparison between that and the AWU scandal is clutching at straws. Perhaps Kingston could reserve a place for Grattan in her nursing class.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right. It's not comparable with the AWU "scandal"; Gillard didn't break the law by lying to the Australian Electoral Commission.

      Delete
  18. I'm still not convinced that Grattan isn't Jabba in drag. Has anyone seen them in the same room?

    Ah Mrs Magoo you've done it again.

    ReplyDelete