The people’s swill
Niall Clugston writes: Re. “Crikey says: welcome to the unrepresentative swill” (yesterday). Crikey‘s editorial can echo Paul Keating and brand the PUP senators and others as “unrepresentative swill”, but Keating’s smear covered all the Senate, including the Greens. This doesn’t, however, cover Clive Palmer himself. Changing the Senate’s voting rules will not prevent him from holding a House of Representatives seat.
The fact is these new parliamentarians may be unpleasant, but they are not unrepresentative. They represent the people’s swill. Tinkering with the barometer will not change the weather.
Think of the footy tippers
Brendan Linnane writes: Re. “Footy fail: the AFL has lost its way” (yesterday). I help run an AFL tipping comp on the north shore of Sydney (took advantage of the demise of North Sydney).
We have 65 tipsters paying $50 in, with half returned in prizes with the other half going to a major grand final party (the NRL comp in same pub has about 25 members).
The Thursday night games are an absolute disaster, as we’ve had many guys miss out on getting the Thursday night game tipped.
Unbelievable arrogance from AFL.
Hear hear Brendan Linnane; this is a much under-appreciated point. Thursday and Monday games are also a bugger for the 100,000-odd AFL fantasy coaches, as you can’t get access to selection information covering the entire round before lock-out.
Dear Crikey, not sure where to put this, but let’s try here at the bottom of the page.
Two observations.
(1) When the head honcho, publisher Marina Go, gets a new gig and is moving on. (& good on her) It feels a bit “rude”, that your subscribers have to find out elsewhere on the Intertubes & there’s no mention in Crikey.
(2) Not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a major breaking story of refoulment, from that “paragon of virtue” Scott Morrison.
Surely worth even a *vague* mention in dispatches?
After all, you *are* supposed to be holding the Govt to account.
Really Niall… Ricky Muir is not representative of anything except himself and the infinitesimal number of people who voted for him. He got into his latest job because of behind the scenes deals. When the bulk of people vote “1” above the line, very few know exactly where the other numbers from 2 to around 100 go. The people of Victoria did not vote for Ricky Muir, he got lucky and hopefully “tinkering with the barometer” will end this perversion of democracy in future.
Vote below the line!