As of today, Larvatus Prodeo will cease publishing.
After a couple of test posts, the blog began to wend its way through the online world on March 17, 2005, so it’s a very old beast in internet years.
We collectively feel seven years is enough.
I think LP played a significant role in stimulating political debate over the course of its life, and acted as something of a catalyst for a lot of good things in the spaces of new media and public discourse.
To large degree, though, the caravan has moved on.
There’s no longer the same need for a hub for political discussion, as lively debate has migrated to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and as the space for opinion and analysis around the shop has widened. The fact that the ‘blogosphere’ in Australia is no longer a term that makes much sense is an indicator of that change.
To a large degree, LP was a victim of its own success, adopting a role as a sort of ‘blog of record’ where the daily political news could be analysed and dissected. I think this was an important thing for some time, particularly during the last of the Howard years. However, LP bloggers, I think, became increasingly uneasy about this focus, wondering whether we weren’t inadvertently feeding the media cycle beast.
I am convinced there’s a role for a more curated and conciously counter-cultural focus on policy, shifts in the lived experience of our public culture, and serious examination of flashpoints in the battle between reason and untruth.
Some of us tried something in that vein with our recent collaboration between FAQ Research and Crikey, Coal Seam Gas: Behind the Seams. I think we’ve also contributed meaningfully to the achievement of those goals through our coverage and analysis of climate science and climate policy here.
We have come to the conclusion that while we’d like to reorient our perspective as writers and analysts, LP is not the place to do it. The blog has its own momentum (and its own inertia), and it’s not an easy thing to turn around.
Several LP bloggers will be striking out in new directions, some as yet in the process of coalescing. If you’re interested, and I hope you will be, in following and participating in our individual and collective efforts with others, I’d encourage you to ‘like’ our Facebook page, where we’ll direct people to other things we decide to do.
Anyone interested in what I might do media-wise might also like to sign up to the FAQ Research e-newsletter, and ‘like‘ us on Facebook. I think there’ll be a new media project down the track, combining research articles, multi-media and blogging and social media, but, again, spadework needs doing. I think it’s important to focus on some very profound issues of science, change, policy and risk, and the massive impacts on our society and culture they shape. I also think a sharper focus on the dissemination and production of social scientific and cultural knowledges is key.
Should you wish to make a donation to support such an endeavour, there’s an IndieGoGo fundraising page here. Any serious media effort requires funding, covering hosting fees, design, and most importantly, some small compensation for the time of the contributors. You may also wish to express your thanks for our work over the years since 2005.
In the meantime, when I have the impulse to write, I’ll be updating my personal blog, Sed Probates Spiritus, and other LP bloggers who start up new projects may update this post while comments are open. If you’re looking for other places for independent Australian political commentary, you can’t go past John Quiggin and Club Troppo (where my own blogging trajectory began) and Crikey and New Matilda. And of course, there’s the excellent Hoyden About Town.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to the history and spirit of this blog to just keep it ticking over while our energies are directed elsewhere (and it does take a lot of energy to do this sort of work).
Many, I suspect, will feel sad at this blog’s closure, but it simply isn’t and can’t be the vehicle for what the times demand now, and into the future.
It remains for me to thank, from my heart, all those who’ve shared the journey: bloggers, guest writers, commenters, all. Your enthusiasm and talents have been, and are, wonderful and the archive of this site, as well as your future endeavours in working towards a much better standard of public discourse in this nation, are their own tribute.
It would be wrong to thank people by name, but you know how grateful I am. This blog has been a large part of my life for a very long time, and it’s hard to say goodbye, but new beginnings are also an important thing in life.
Comments will remain open for a short time, but then be closed permanently.
Peace be with you all!
Update: Robert Merkel has a new blog at A Bent Ghost.
Update: [by Kim] The Pirate Queen’s Panopticon is moderating your interwebz here. I’m also hoping to be part of the new media venture Mark refers to in this farewell post.
It was a privilege and a pleasure to be part of Larvatus Prodeo, Mark. Thank you.
Hāere ra.
Thanks for all the posts, analysis and opportunity to discuss stuff over the years. I’ve lurked more than I contributed, mea culpa.
All the best with what happens next for all of you.
Australia desperately needs a one-stop portal for left wing views, analysis and opinions.
So did we ever figure out about Missy Higgins?
Who am I going to troll now? Sad news, but Mark & Brian would know better than anyone when it’s time to pull the plug. Thanks for all your work (and I’m sure it was a lot of work)!
Thank you.
Liam about Missy Higgins – A great singer/songwriter. That’s enough for me.
Mark and others: I an sorry LP ends just as I thought I was starting to engage my head. I have been knocked out by the content, the topics, the contributors in all capacities. I happily admit my envy of some of the intellects that have made my brief experience with LP so rewarding. So thanks Mark, and thanks to all LP-ers for adding to this old fart’s world.
Kind regards to all, Geoff Henderson
Fair enough Geoff.
As for LP let this be its epitaph: it was Better Than Normblog.
dear editor
wow: sic gloria transit.
i’ll miss you all a lot.
so long and thanks for all the fish.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Thank you very much, a great thing, sad to see it go, there’s been nothing like, it will be missed. It has been a place of sanity and reason in a world of spin.
Thank you LP. Goodbye and goodluck.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I have some projects of my own in the planning stages, but I have also started a new personal blog called A Bent Ghost if I have something to say in the meantime (which will probably be far too often).
Seven years, wow. Don’t they go by in a blink. Good Luck.
Nothing like going out with a great saying
“flashpoints in the battle between reason and untruth”
If the blog was going to die a slow death, you are right that this is the way to end it.
Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.
PS Those first few posts make very interesting reading. It really doesn’t seem like seven years ago.
Dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have spent that time before clicking Post Comment reading old ones! RM got in first with the Douglas Adams reference.
Honoured to have been part of LP way back during the halcyon days of the Oz blogosphere. Good times and good discussions.
May the current voices of LP continue to speak loudly elsewhere!
I think we could all use a bit of a cuddle.
Hugs!
Ps – I’m here:
http://yellowvinyl.wordpress.com/
Back Pages, Troppo and LP kicked me off into the ‘blogosphere’ from 2004. It’s been quite the trip.
Congratulations to all. It can’t be easy orchestrating a collective blog, negotiating with half a dozen or more writer’s egos and one hundred ten fold more the egos of commentors.
Good luck to all ~ finally free.
Do what you want to do, be what you want to be yeah.
Kim, your writing and take on things has always been both engaging and refreshing. Please keep up something similar.
To the purple pages, keep your door open, you might be surprised at how differently feel you feel after Wednesday.
@Linkusbless
This really quite sad. Although I’m a quite late comer to LP this has been the first place I’ve generally browsed when I’ve gone to the web, so for me this is something like learning that a good friend has acquired a terminal illness.
Obviously, good blogs require human volunteers who can show up 10/7 if not 24/7. Nobody can ask anyone to do that indefinitely, and those of you who have my respect. You’ve given me great pleasure and an outlet for thinking out loud with many others I’d never have met otherwise. To them too — even those with whom I’ve sharply differed — I also offer my thanks. Oddly, over at another blog, I had cause to quote these words from Shelley (though for nearly the opposite reasons:
For both good and ill, I think this apt of what I’ve read here. I hope that at least the blog archive will remain publicly available, even allowing that nothing is added. I’d be happy to be amongst those contributing to see that this occurs. There is a lot here that is worth preserving for the record — and in particular, the Climate Clippings series authored by Brian.
Thanks and good luck to all the LPers with their future blog/media/writing endeavors.
Thank you to all the writers and commenters. Best of luck with all your new adventures. Everything has its natural lifespan and I think you’ve probably made a wise call.
Thanks for all the hard work Mark. Great effort and yes, it’s time to move on. Though the medium may change, the discussion remains.
Thanks to LP for everything. Very appreciated.
Best wishes to everyone for the future.
Thanks for the opportunity to air my views and have them tested by intelligent people.
Special thanks to Brian as environmental issues are closer to my heart than any others.
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened”
Final toss of cat amongst the pigeons.
Not a supporter of Pell or organised religion, but on Q & A last night he came across as wiser, more level headed, more rational and far better educated in the subjects of history and science than Dawkins. The latter who seemed petulant, made excuses about being jet-lagged and showed little charm or grace.
As for Tony Jones trying for his ‘gotcha’ moment in getting Pell to admit that he believed in the strangely loaded phrase of ‘intelligent design’ which Pell wouldn’t be drawn on other than to say that he believed God was indeed intelligent.
Link, the current Saturday Salon post is still open! (and will be til the end of this week, I think). So perhaps cat tossing could go there
I also, have been educated by LP. Sad to see it go but will follow up the above links, as I’m sure many else will. Thanks for all the time and effort. What i liked about this site was the, can i say, humanism of many of the authors and commenters? A true haven from the narrow-mindedness one can sometimes see all around…..
It’s lovely to see everyone’s names coming up here – hello Link from many years ago now. I’m an old LPer who hasn’t posted here for about three years, life took over in a way that precluded blogging, but I am also sad to see the closure and say goodbye to ‘our gang’. I’d also like to mention Brian’s climate posts as a recent highlight – Brian, you’re a rival to, in fact you outstrip, many professional journalists on that subject. Best wishes to everyone.
Back Pages! There’s a blast from the past – my first ever blog comment was made there (or maybe at The Flute).
In any case, I quickly moved here to LP. I can see what Mark is saying is true: the Blog is ceding ground to FB and Twitter. Shame though, as I doubt the national library will bother to record the latter !
And so, comrades and sparring partners, thanks and farewell! It’s been a grand transformation. Before blogdom, I was ranting at the Telly . Now I feel like part of the public sphere, ranting with others – and that journos come here for ideas.
It’s been a revolution and a revelation. Thanks Mark! Thanks all the rest of you!
The Last Post indeed…. Hear its refrains, inner Melbourne , playing from my French clocks, over the balcony from my rooms at Keating Towers…
Salutes!
Lefty E
Nothing else to say but thank you and good luck to the writers (and commenters).
This is a surprise.
Email me to let me know what you want me to do next.
Thank you for your efforts in running the blog. Although I mainly lurked I enjoyed many of the posts and associated discussions. Good luck in future endeavors
Thank you Mark, Kim, et. al. for all the commentary over the years. Follow your hearts in whatever you want to do.
Sorry, Jacques, I think we thought you were on the LP collective list! Ah well, creative chaos to the last
*herding cat*
Hi Suze.
Oh Vale LP, erstwhile refuge of rakes, wits, pirates and necromancers. Thank you so much for aiding and abetting my PhD avoidance through the years. Thank you also for the really vibrant discussions, the humour and the light. Goodbye kindreds, long may you stoush somewhere in the internet realms and netherworlds, making war upon dark lords in speedos and stuff like that.
Well done Mark, Kim, Robert and Co. M’taking credit for being one of your original linkers, back when we were all small blogs and daily rants, but the return favour from your own list here ended up like some shares in a successful internet startup, with your exponential (I think literally, I don’t believe I’m just overusing the overused metaphor there) growth.
Like Huffington Post, but without the inane cult of personality.
Good luck. I hope to see a lot more of all of you in the coming decades. There is work to be done on ‘our side of things’, perhaps bigger work than has been needed since the 1960s…
From my perspective the main achievement, and this will be different for probably every person, was the introduction of a Climate Change targeting Carbon something or other. Brian’s Climate Clippings, I like to believe, had a lot to do with that. So thanks Brian for you immense energies, and thanks Mark for your wit and balanced judgement over the years. So also to TigTog, Kim and RobertM, thanks.
Climate Clippings are “out there” and will remain an enduring resource, and a marker for the Climate of our Time.
One of the things that the Left has been less good than the Right at has been sustaining open, non-sectarian forums for debate among like minded people, at least in Australia. Arena, ALR etc. have all faded into memory, while Quadrant, IPA Review etc. keep chugging along. LP has played a vital role in being such a space over the last seven years, with an openness and iconoclasm that has always been refreshing. I would note, for instance, that LP was one of the few outlets to question the orthodoxy on Julian Assange and Wikileaks, at a time when it was very unfashionable to do so. The contribution of LP and the team behind it has been very much welcomed in this regard, and it will be missed.
How sad. I remember LP was one of the first sites I use to link or copy and paste information from to debate on political messageboards.
However this blog will still be in the Library in the sky for future generation to research . And I am sure that is a great gift of the time spent .
One final salute: specifically to Brian. Thanks so much for Climate Clippings, and I know im not alone when I say I hope they continue in some form – perhaps as a stand alone blog?
LE
Yes, thank you all. LP contributions changed my views from time to time especially about defence of the netz from Conroy’s filter. It also changed my previously deeply sceptical attitude about the potential of the netz to constitute a meaningful public sphere. Vale and thanks again.
Thanks for all the hard work over the past seven years and for putting up with an awful lot. This place became my go to place for political debate and discussion after Tim Dunlop closed Road to Surfdom. Such talent was never going to be bound to a blog forever. Good luck to all your future endeavours.
That’s sad. Oh well – cheers LP crew.
Good luck in the future.
Brian especially thanks. Your work has been excellent.
Oh and Fran @ 22, I’m pretty sure that was Omar Khayyam, as translated by E Fitzgerald.
Its kind of appropriate tho:
Valete LPers. You’ll be sadly missed.
Will Brian continue to do his very useful Climate Clippings somewhere in the intertubes, I wonder?
Hugs to you all. LP lasted longer than most of my marriages. I will miss it.
Sad to see you go but cultural evolution is all, looking forward to seeing how everyone adapts and reappears in different forms and forums.
Ack, I’m pleased to have been at the birth, less pleased to be clutching a martini at the wake. Damned good innings though – well played.
Oh dear, I’m so sad to hear of the closing of LP! I’ve never been much of a commentator, but have been checking & reading for years.
Thanks heaps for all the work, and best wishes.
I had a feeling this was coming, what with Bahnisch Jr moving into the MSM.
I’ll miss baiting the old Spart.
I’ll Bahnisch Sr’s good sense.
I’ll miss Kim’s and Helen’s over-developed sense of moral superiority.
I’ll miss Terry’s cynicism.
I’ll miss Adrian’s pining after Kevin Rudd, like a dog who has lost his master.
I’ll miss all the preposterous apologetics for the Greens, from certain people. You know who you are.
Thanks to all, it’s been great (mostly) while it lasted.
I’m sure that the energy, enthusiasm and intelligence of the main participants will resurface elsewhere.
PS Sam – you’ve got me wrong there, but I guess I’ll even miss you!
Great job of many years. Sad to see it go but very much looking forward to what you all branch off to next.
How sad, it’s vanished and bahnisched.
So long, and thanks for all the purple.
Thanks for all the work put into LP.
And I second LeftyE’s hope that Brian’s climate related posts continue somewhere.
I will miss the dear old purple thing. *sniff*
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be part of it all, Mark; and thanks to my fellow authors and the many readers/commentors who have made this place so interesting over the years.
Sorry to see you go LP. Not sure what I’ll do for relief from the mind-numbing tedium of day-to-day existence now. Maybe I’ll follow JQ and take up triathlons. Best wishes LP’ers for your future endeavours. No doubt we’ll hear more of you through various channels.
Thanks to everybody who has written here for all the work you have done. I’ve learnt so much from all the writers.
Thanks for all the insights and analysis from a unique LP perspective over the years. An impressive achievement! All the best for future endeavours.
I’m forever grateful to LP for giving me a larger platform to blog from, than the Cast Iron Balcony. Let me join others in giving Brian special mention for his wonderful work on climate. I’d also like to mention Kim, the one most willing to put her neck on the block by blogging from a feminist perspective. I did so more rarely. I see we’re the only two LP writers so far to be singled out for ad hominem insult (rolls eyes upthread to #54). Still, I wear it with pride. Anyway, thank you all for having me! LP was a great community and I have enjoyed bantering with all my favourite and not so favourite commenters here.
Thanks LP folk, best wishes for the future to you all.
Vale LP! Thank you so much to you all for creating and managing such an excellent conversation space for so long. I greatly appreciated it.
I am torn on whether there is a need for a politically left hub as it were, and if so whether it would look like LP or something different. But what I’m quite sure of is that LP provided a core part of that role for a very long time, and enriched the lives of many and political discourse for doing it.
Thank you, and I look forward very much to seeing and following the projects of prodeo bitlings.
(three) Cheers, Imogen
Thanks for the opportunity to guest post and comment over the years. Does this mean that your archives disappear too?
The naked feminist knitting circle lives on in my heart. See youse all on twitter.
Congratulations, Mark, and all your fellows here at LP. I’ve been a stranger for too long, but back in 06-07 you were my entree into intelligent conversation and analysis on the interwebs, and what an amazing thing that was.
I’ll always appreciate the support you gave me in setting up Greensblog way back in the day, too. Also sadly died a death, much sooner than LP.
Looking forward to what you guys create over the next few years.
Thanks LP!
Tim
A sad day indeed. Farewell all you writers and commenters who have illuminated and enlivened my days. This was the best leftish political blog in Oz since the demise of Road to Serfdom. I’ll miss you all profoundly.
Good luck to all.
John D, we are planning on keeping the archives available, but disabling comments entirely in the not too distant future.
This is sad news. Thanks for the lively debate!
Thank you to Mark for giving me the opportunity to blog here for several years. And to the LP crew, contributors and commenters alike, thank you for the lively conversation.
Good luck and good night.
I think this is terrible news. I certainly respect the blog owners decision to close but I think that a significant forum for critical analysis of govt. policy and social trends will be lost. As for Twitter and Facebook, I’ve never used the former and found that the latter generated a lot of useless chatter. Hopefully the debate will continue at Quiggan, Andrew Elder, Loon Pond etc. Anyway thanks to the blog owners for the last few years.
It seems a bit of a trend though, I used to like Tim Dunlop’s blog and that closed and then there was that one that I can’t remember the name of but it had an ongoing stoush with Ian Hall or was it Graham Bird, anyway it closed as well. I suspect the need to earn a living has something to do with the closures.
Here is a little parting offering, that just appeared in my email box (I’m normally imune to this stuff) for all bloggers who have tried to post comments from their phones, I’m thinking of Fran here
http://www.todayzdeals.com.au/deal/1148/just-40-for-bluetooth-slider-qwerty-keyboard-case-for-iphone-4-4s-normally-99-that-s-a-huge-saving-of-59/
If you are an iPone user tis could be for you. Mine is an HTC, but I am ordering one anyway, I’ll find a way to make it fit.
Maybe for old time’s sake one of the mods could work <img/> magic?
TigTog, I feel especially sad for for all of the effort you put in converting the website.
Best of luck with your journalism projects Mark and Kim. This is very sad, thank you LP bloggers and farewell commenters, I’m going to miss this place. +1 on the importance of Climate Clippings, I will especially miss Brian’s posts.
Vale LP. I find twitter and facebook limited mediums and they won’t have the durability of blogs so I won’t be participating very much in those discussions (liking a facebook page is nowhere near as fun as a good blog stoush.)
Claims about the decline of commenting culture on blogs seem to be undercut a tad by the fact that this post has already over 70 comments, and another post on the LP main page over 100!
Anyway, you were a good blog – I didn’t always agree with you, but I knew interesting and stimulating opinions could always be found here. Thanks for the memories.
PS Time to let Evil Pundit and CL back on for a last hurrah?
Thanks BilB, but (a) the latest version has had a good run, really and (b) I’m always running up new templates for one blog or another, so it’s just part of the process of web developing.
I’d just like to add my thanks to everyone who participated in some way.
Especially Missy Higgins fans.
Liam, I think that Jacques has things locked down so that moderator-image-magic is not longer effective
testing: (nope, it wouldn’t embed. Here’s the link)
http://larvatusprodeo.ozblogistan.com.au/files/2012/04/so-long-farewell.jpg
Sorry, default setting for WordPress multisite. I’ll give it an eyeball when I get home, if there’s still time.
We want to keep this thread alive for a week or two to let everybody who wants to have their chance to say goodbye, Jacques. Hope that’s time enough?
Oh goodness. And there was me on the train this morning, thinking about how Mark seemed to have moved on from LP and wondering what the future held for this old place.
Seven years is a good run, and it’s always best to wind up, if not at the top of the flow, then before you get to the bottom of an ebb.
Thank-you, all of you, for the good times you’ve provided me over the years, hiveminders, and commenters. You’ve (mostly) been good fun. Actually, I think my goat was got only once in the seven years, which isn;t bad.
loves to all youse and good luck in the future. I hopes we cross paths again.
xx
d
tigtog — sure, that should be fine.
I’ve been down to the physio and have to go out to work, so I’ve only had time to skim. A quick word now and maybe something more considered later.
I started with Webdiary in 2002, commenting and writing a few pieces. They’ve mangled the archives, and therewith about five pieces which were amongst my best.
Mark and I both commented on Back Pages, which was perhaps the first time a father and son engaged on comments threads. I did a few guest posts for Quiggin along the way.
Mark joined Troppo I think on 18 October 2004 when it was pretty moribund and virtually revived it before starting LP at Easter 2005. LP felt strange for me at first, but I became very comfortable here.
I’m very happy Climate Clippings seemed to hit a mark. When I first posted about CC even respected people tended to think I was a raving alarmist. No-one sensible calls me that now.
I’m 72 and I’m just going to rest up for a while. I’m definitely not going to start a blog, but CC or something like it may rise again somewhere. Mark says it would fit with the new thing he has in mind. It’s not my style to go gentle into that good night.
But right now I gotta go!
What is with you lefties and a lack of staying power?
Well perhaps the problem with blogs such as this has been a rather partisan attitude to any dissenting viewpoints. While its nice, warm and fuzzy to have a hive-mind collective it is ultimately self-defeating as debates end up being very one sided.
The advent of twitter may well suit the tendency to come up with snappy and snarky one liners it is very much a totally disposable medium that is very quickly forgotten. As for Facebook it is a very poor medium for political debate.
Ah well I may well run into some of you around the traps and you will of course be welcome at blogs like mine where dissent from the authors’ viewpoint is both celebrated and welcome.
Cheers Comrades
Truly a sad day for lefty [ableist slur redacted] everywhere. As we have seen after the Qld election there aren’t many left who appreciate your “analysis” anyway.
Sad to see it go. I know how it feels though. After a bunch of years a non profitable blog or website can start feeling like a chain around the leg with a growing feeling of “What am I spending my short one-off life doing here?”. I used to run perth indymedia which had no end of madness around it, and for the first 4-5 years it was a huge community, but as the trolling and conspiratorial stupidity from certain “contributors” started to take its toll, the community died , and it turned from a joy into a chore. In the end the site just didn’t feel positive anymore, barely believed in its model of “open publishing” anymore (I’ve long since had my belief in the internet being a positive thing shaken to the core) and I finally after about a year of deliberation cut the chord. It felt like liberation.
Thanks Mark (and Rob Corr) for giving me the chance to get into blogging. I loved it almost all of the time and I will miss my Presbyterean boiler-suits.
I’m usually hanging out on Twitter these days so please come
troll mesay hi to @vodkandlime.Little dasher @88. I disagree, and add that even though I am fairly new to LP, your comment is the most uninformed, juvenile and crappiest POS I have seen. A dubious distinction, but well earned.
Not my cup of tea ideologically speaking but this has been a well run blog. Sorry to see it bite the dust. Facebook has lured lots of us away from semrious blogging but I don’t feel that the Facebook medium is quite as open or that suitable for lengthy articles of substance. Still it has an appeal that seems to often outweigh those downsides.
Victim of your own success? Bullshit. More like an admission of abject failure. The caravan has moved on indeed. L/NP governments in WA, NSW, Vic, Qld and soon federally. Labor has nothing to thank you clowns for.
Like so many others, I’m sorry LP has had to end. It’s been my first port-of-call for well-reasoned discussion and analysis for years, and it’ll leave a hole.
Thanks for being amongst the rightists who have conceded that. Helping the ALP was never part of the brief of this blog.
I assume the reference to “clowns” was an admission that LP often provided amusement in what is a dismal public space. That was one of this blog’s strengths.
Sad to see you go!
*sigh* I liked the old trolls better than the new trolls. Carry on pressing ice cream cones into your foreheads, you muppets
Thank you all.
You will be missed.
Gratitude to Mark for the opportunity to join with erudite interlocuters.
To Helen, Kim, Tigtog, Anna for their wise posts and for a graciousness and forbearance in moderation that I couldn’t emulate.
To Brian for incredible integrity and quality posts.
To Norto and Guy and Phil and Robert for posts that made my blood boil at times.
To the aforementioned erudite interlocuters: PB, Down & Out, venison, akn, verity violet, Jules, all the Joes and Patrickses, bilb, Ootz, Liam, Fb, the “poet” from WA (I don’t mean Gina): and to those I’ve temporarily forgotten, thank you.
To Casey, for once almost cracking my ribs from laughter.
The gratuitous nasty drive-by pedantic carping unreflective unrepentant ever-invective trolls I shall miss less.
And, coming full circle: gratitude once again to Mark, for setting us free.
Ps: and LeftyE and DI(nr)!
Great line @97. If only you had come in 2 comments later that would have rhymed.
And I forgot Merc and Helen in my thanks. Unintentional.
Larvatus Prodeo has been one of the most consistently enlightening and compelling blogs in Australia for so many years it’s a shock to hear it’s closing. Congratulations to Mark and everyone who’s been involved. It’s a magnificent achievement. Best wishes in whatever you do next. (Writing for The Conversation?)
Thank you to the mods and authors at LP, for everything.
Thank you to any and all that have contributed in considered, thoughtful, often insightful ways.
This lurker will miss you all.
One question, was the 911 conspiracy theory thread the longest? If not which was?
Sad news, but well done to Mark and all the contributors over the years.
Thanks LP Collective, for all the great work, insightful posts and rollicking threads.
Will miss youse (as presently constituted) all.
Unwelcome news.
Thanks for the fun.
Best wishes for your future endeavours.
Well, since trackbacks are long since made obsolete, here’s my piece.
Bad news. It’s been the most reliable broadsheet source of all.
Best of luck to you all for the future.
All been said, but thanks all the same.
+1 for Brian to continue on another platform, his were the posts that kept me coming back this last year or so.
Sad day! All the best to all the LP mob. Personally I think you should have just let it keep going and evolve into whatever would be. Still I’m sure you had your reasons …
Hope you all end up blogging at various places otherwise you’ll certainly be missed.
A sad day indeed. I check in after a lengthy absence to read this sad news.
Well done Mark, Brian, Kim, Tig Tog, Robert and others. I have read many great posts and many illuminating comments.
I think LP helped shape the political discourse in Australia for the better and shine some light where it needed to be shone. I met some great people via LP too.
All good things must come to an end it seems.
I wish you all success in your future projects and ventures.
Thank you for all your hard work. Its been a great solace reading like minded points of view
Tragic that such a valuable and attractive piece of purple is disappearing from the blogosphere. I better re-design mine (and start posting on it again – I probably should have let it go the way of this one some time ago; I tend to feel the same way about the superceding role ‘newer’ social media now plays in enabling public interchange on political stuff.)
Thanks for the nice words some posters wrote about from time to time – balanced about by commenters who wrote some less nice things. My hopes for one last post telling people in Brisbane it’d be a good idea to vote for me for Lord Mayor have been dashed!
But seriously, in amongst all of the opinions there has been some very valuable and valid information – including but certainly not limited to the area of climate change. I’m sure it will continue to one form or another and I’ll try to track it down. I just hope the website it appears has as much purple.
To Mark and all LP contributors,
Thanks for the work, dedication, and commitment to a credible political philosophy, rather than blind support of a particular faction. You will be missed, and I urge you to write on in your new preferred medium.
Despite some jibes about staying power, I cna udnerstand your decision. Doing this properly obviously takes time and effort. Unlike some on the right, there are few billionaires funding people to write opinon and analysis from a left of centre political viewpoint.
I don’t regard most of your views as very leftiist, just progressive and liberal. It is an indictment of the atrophy of our political thought that that is sufficient to be labelled leftist these days.
Suppose it had to come to this. Cheers and thanks!
The Last Post. Vale and salute, LP!
Always loved the wit and grace under adversity of it all and that I could be one of the many that cruised off the efforts of the few. And to get down with my inner Zoroaster, LP’s time on this world was impermanent but on the right side of the struggle between truth and falsehood.
Good luck all and many thanks.
I’ve been an exile from LP over the past year or so, just occasionally posting on a few topics like media. That was a whim of my own, feeling that a majority had been a bit hard on the Gillard minority government, where I thought they’d done pretty well in appalling circumstances.
Heavens, it was bad enough copping it from the right via the MSM, without getting it just as bad from the left. But maybe it’s me just drifting a bit right as I enter old age.
But I’m still sorry to see it go. It has been an ornament to free thought and certainly for getting something in a little more depth than we can hope for in the MSM. We are all grateful for the variety of posters contributing.
I rather hope that blogs continue in some form or other. Maybe it’s my age again but Facebook and Twitter, while they certainly accelerate the information and allow reaction quickly to events, don’t seem to have the same scope for reflection.
Many thanks for the stimulation over the years, and for allowing me to post comments.
Partir, c’est mourir un peu.
I salute all who have given so generously of their time and thoughts – even when we have disagreed.
Goodnight, and good luck!
I tried before but the comment seems to have disappeared somehow. Farewell and good luck to all who sailed in LP. Glad to hear at least some of you will be blogging elsewhere.
Personally I reckon you should have let LP live on and evolve organically. Still I’m sure you had your reasons.
Troppo farewell post here.
[You got spaminated, Ken! Sorry it took a while to fish you out]
…and I shall miss Katz’s acerbic wit, and Ken L’s dour disapproval!
The 9/11 Thread of Doom was the longest, but the mystery of Missy Higgins set the benchmark for Milliganesquery.
So it all lasted 7 seasons, like Buffy. Fitting, really.
Who can blame you.
When Julia’s gone in 18 months , it’s looking like a leftoid free decade Federally.
Best of luck in the search for a subsidised lifestyle comrades.
My Saturdays and lazy Sundays will never be the same again
There are some very silly comments from me back in the early days as I cut my teeth on this new blogging thing. Thanks for the support over the years guys. I am sorry to see you go, but excited to see what new adventures you go on to.
Come on Fyodor and Devil Drink, LP can’t go out without you guys saying goodbye.
Enjoyed contributing, but I could see the wheels were slowing down lately. It’s a shame: those of us who fear not are running off into the next sunset while the fearful draw their caravans ever tighter. Thanks to all I interacted with, and a special thanks for the LOOP thread which was a highlight of internet interaction for me and other frustrated doggerel enthusiasts.
I posted this in response to Liam’s blog, but it’s appropos:
I remember back in what felt like very dark days in the middle of the Howard years, being absolutely electrified by Daily Flute, Back Pages et al, but especially by LP. The idea of a an inchoate force of Australians who not only gave a shit about politics but had the wherewithal to discuss it – shrewdly, lewdly, and often attitude-ly – being brought together by a collection of very intimate, almost familial websites was (for me, at least) a huge step in the evolution of web-based identities and political discourse in this country. People forget, I think, that Poll Bludger, predates Crikey, Blair’s website was progressive in at least one sense, etc etc etc.
These sites all set a match to established political discourse in Australia, and wrested it from the exclusive domain of Insiders and the increasingly turgid op-ed pages of the paper. It was democratising in a legitimately exciting, novel, way.
I suppose in some ways LP was what it was, because that’s what we needed. And we ceased needing it, or needed something else, as the rest of Australia gradually caught up and comment threads started resembling YouTube more than some kind of Agora-like melange of pithy one-liners and sharpened rhetorical arrows.
The idea of blogs as a rallying flag for a disparate group of believers now seems quaint, almost naive. They’ve become instead badges to sew to one’s intellectual jacket – and are the poorer for it, I think.
The exciting thing about LP was its super-relevance for a time, it superseded the discourses we had been encouraged to passively digest. It wasn’t alone in that, of course, but for a particular demographic (MINE!), it was the best at it.
In this respect, I feel like everything and nothing has replaced it. There are dozens of places I can go to get the information it provided, and nowhere (not even the site itself in latter times) I can get the sense of community.
For that, I thank you. For educating me, commiserating & celebrating with me, challenging and denigrating me, complimenting and championing me. Most of all, for befriending me. That goes for everyone that made up LP as we know it: contributors, commenters, lovers and haters.
Vale, LP. For one brief, shining moment, there was Camelot.
“So did we ever figure out about Missy Higgins?”
# Haiku Hogan, I heard she was a Larvatu-proderian, in the end.
Heh. In the end.
(I think Fyodor heard that Missy Higgins was Fyodor)
Farewell Mark and Kim, from the flirty early days back in 2005-06….
I em twoice bireaved. My grenddaughter Punker Punker lest Thursday, end now Larvatus Prodeo. Thenk you for not duscrumunatung eginst a non-humen commintater from ecross the dutch, end for publushung all my commints.
Am I ever gonna see Jack and Fyodor again?
(No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!)
I heard that Fyodor was actually Harry.
Re Devil Drink. You know there were nights when I really thought I was talking to Satan. In fact even typing now, the dude still creeps me out. I mean he sure sounds like the President of the Australian Hotels Association. Frightening. And I am a witch.
Oh you did that on purpose didn’t you Satan?
What makes you think you’re not, Casey. What makes you think you’re not.
What a shame.
I started posting here around 2006 I think it was before the ALP came back into power anyway. I’ve often been critical of our Labor government on here from a left-wing perspective and felt it was okay to do so here at LP (unlike on some other blogs), a true left-wing blog.
I’ve often enjoyed reading the contributions of Mark, Paul, Mr Denmore, Fran and even Sam.
LP and Blogocracy were two blogs I really enjoyed but now gone and unfortunately with both you could see things were coming to an end.
Although I rarely comment there given it’s a hard-right blog but Catallaxy seems to do a good job especially with it’s weekly open threads which LP never really had other than Saturday Salon threads which always felt a bit funny commenting in later in the week and were often hard to find once they died.
I much prefer the idea where people can congregate and generate open discussion themselves say like a Poll Bludger but at LP it was more thread specific comments (and only then if an article was written by someone). It did especially towards the end feel more controlled and a bit heavily-moderated than most other blogs but so be it. House rules is house rules.
Thanks for giving us LP Mark and all the best for the future.
I’ll miss this place. Thanks for letting me play here. There were 2 parts to LP, the Post, and the Comments. As good as the Posts were, it was the Comments that made this place, for me. I got to know people, (or so I thought), based on a few lines of text. And here they are, being themselves to the very end. Thanks everyone.
I’ll also miss Paul Norton.
And Steve at the Pub, though he seems to have gone a while ago.
Well, even after all these years, I am never certain. These blog identities have a way of “speaking true”, to quote Gail Jones, quoting Paul Celan. One day I will meet you devil drink. Then you will tell me for sure if you are AHA or not.
I can see it now, Casey. The first thing that you’ll utter will be, “Aha!”
Okeydokey, Mindy, you got me.
I alluded to this point this chez Hoges, but it’s probably better said here, which is that this post and thread are a morbid disgrace and utterly unworthy of the blog that hosted the IMHL thread.
LP was a spectacular achievement, with the best blog commentary, stoushing, flirtation and erudite absurdity ever witnessed in Ozblogistan. Yes, the best days are past, but we should celebrate what was achieved, not bemoan what could not be sustained.
Larva Prodders, I raise my glass to ye. Congratulations!
And FFFS get this site archived properly. Also: where’s my t-shirt, Bruce?
Sam, this will be the first time you haven’t missed me!
I meant, the first time you have missed me!
GregM, Jack Strocchi, Silkworm, Jinmaro, Birdy, Homer Paxton, where’s your sense of occasion?
All the lipsnigers are on pinterest I understand, Fyodor.
I’d like to thank all involved as well. I learnt a lot here. I think the thing that I liked most was the fact that nearly all the posts were about discussion and not just polemics. The responses though….
What an Easter!. No Easter eggs, forced to watch the oleogenous George Pell last night and now this!!. Life just seems to get harder.
Thanks for the input of all involved in the creation and continued running of this site and thank you also to all the contributors over time – I’m sure I’ll miss hearing from many of you as well (probably not the pedantic ones though).
P.S I wish there were some way of hearing the outcome of Paul Burns’ epic struggle through his studies and books eventually. Perhaps a note on Facebook? Arreverdici.
[presses F5]
“Arreverdici”
What is that? No really, I’d like to know. Mediatracker, I am not a pendant to be sure, but let’s be serious. Italian is the new white. It’s not enough to just sound sort of like it. You have to inhabit it now.
I will seriously obi wan you if you do that again.
This is one of those things you don’t expect to hear but somehow aren’t all that surprised by when you do. LP does seem to have lost much of its vitality in recent times (understandably so after 7 years, an age my own blog is approaching!) so while its sad to see it go it’s probably a good call. I do share the sense that the blogosphere is not what it was (not just in Australian political blogs either). That doesn’t mean I won’t be looking for something to fill the gap, though.
LP was a bit of a refuge from the seemingly unstoppable rightward drift in politics in the last decade. I’d echo much of what patrickg said at #126 and Liam said on his blog. The posts set the agenda (usually!) but it was the comment threads which really made LP worth reading. I was never really a regular commenter here myself, although I’m proud to have taken part in the 9/11 thread of doom. Well, maybe ‘proud’ is not quite the right word…
So, vale and thank you, larvae prodders! One question: where will I go now to get tssk’s latest prediction for the date Abbott will move into the Lodge?
That’s very sad, and I’ll be sorry to see you go. I’m sure that LP has made its mark on Australian politics, and every writer, mod and poster should feel proud of that.
Could posters start putting links to other sites that espouse a green/left side of Oz politics? I don’t expect a replacement, by any means, but where should us non-Crikey subscribers go?
They’re free, you don’t need to be a Crikey subscriber to comment on their blogs & articles, Jesterette.
Jack Strocchi? Is that you?
I am not a pendant to be sure,
But you’ve made a cameo appearance.
It’s rarely good form to PS having delivered your eulogy, but perhaps a special thanks from ex-Brisbanites like me. LP really helped me keep in touch with the mother country, Quinceland. More than once I drunkenly indulged in a late night Brisbane left RSL style reverie over tough times in the Bjelke years.
Here’s cheers to the purple story bridge!
Thank you.
WHAT!?!? Finished ? I don’t believe it.
Good riddance, Karma for keeping me mod for hours on end.
Although, if you kept going till Xmas,I promise to be gooood.
I mean, what’s the point of me having a puter now?, mayaswell burn it.
Aah well, all things must end. Best pick up the peices and moo move on.
Well that’s all 5, see ya, thanks.(and just as i was becoming popular)
Hey Zabeel, I just purchased .5% of one of your sons. We’re hoping he’ll be running in the Cup in 3 or 4 years. I’ll miss the occasional comment from the horse’s mouth.
All the best for the future people – thanks for the fun
Well what do you say.
I will miss you all.
Hugs from the Huggy Bunny
Brett at 148. Given that Jack Tramel (the head of Commodore Business Machines) died today I give to you the replacement that will fill the void. Just fire up the old C64 and save this to datasette.
10 PRINT”tssk says Oh Noes the sky is falling. I predict Tony Abbott will be PM by lunchtime tomorrow”
20 GOTO 10
There! Your daily fix on your screens! Seriously I hope hope hope that I continue to be wrong, I’ll pull off my Henny Penny mask now and reveal….that I think Tony Abbott would be a disaster for Oz. I’d go into more but this thread should all be about raising a glass in a toast for our gracious hosts for the last seven years. Thanks again, I especially enjoyed the recent thread on Framing the Drug Debate. I know of nowhere else where all sides could have had a civil debate on the topic.
Sic transit gloria. I’m in agreement with those who think that twitttttter and farcebook are not proper replacement ‘platforms’, but this online thingy is mutating at a rate of knots, to be sure.
All the best to all of you who made LP work for so long.
Thanks all, guess I’ll spend more time IRL instead of following the discussions here. I think the great thing has been an ability to disagree while still sensibly discussing issues (except maybe for a few class clowns). Apart from those deliberate trolls who disagree with everyone, probably all here have disagreed with everyone else on one issue or another without blatant disrespect. This is probably unique.
i don’t see facebook (or twitter) as a replacement, it’s DIY reality TV, not serious debate. You’ll leave a vacuum.
Huge thanks to all who kept the ship going for so long.
Seven years of blogging must equal seventy human years, or something like that
. Look forward to catching up somewhere else.
Thanks to all, posters & commenters who made LP a noughties political media icon. I would agree that social media can’t plug this gap but it does seem that something slightly different should.
Meanwhile I’ll dribble on here: guyberes.com
Bugger! Lipsniggery will never be the same without you lot. Is this a grand rightist plot to destroy the left’s tattered remnants? Mad monks and former army officers who know what’s best for us?
OTOH can’t say that I am utterly surprised. One’s energy is finite after all and sometimes we have to move on. Why even today I was reading how the Facebook billionaires are planning their next big thing…
Cheers one an all, even the trolls!
i first started reading LP in 2007 when i was living in the middle of the pacific, desperate for news of the federal election. it’s been an extraordinary source of intelligent analysis and insight, both in posts and comment threads i’ll particularly miss mark’s sociological posts. thanks to the whole larvatus prodeo community – and to the moderators, who did an exceptional job.
Is this thread a canter down Memory Lane or what? Thanks Mark and Kim in particular, as well as the many others — bloggers and commenters alike (well, some commenters) — for offering this free online seven-year tutorial in online conversation, and for expanding my horizons. I’m also grateful to the trolls on this thread for reminding me that the stupid, it burns, and that LP was on the side of the angels.
Kudos to Mark for all the work he put into LP over many years. But the commenters made this blog worth reading.
If LP wasn’t in the end a vanity project to stoke Mark’s ego, the question still needs answering. Why pull the plug on a blog that is still useful and important to many? Why not pass it on to others willing to maintain the community that has sustained it and still does? Or did.
I think I speak for all of us when I say GYOFB.
I don’t see Facebook and Twitter as a replacement either as you’d have to be stupid or crazy brave to have online political debates under your own name. Kudos to those of you who don’t hide behind a nom de plume, I had enough threats during the Bush/Howard years of contacting my employer or other mischief.
That sort of rubbish might have died down in the past five years or so but…Facebook isn’t a safe place for political debate IMHO.
Crumbs, this comes as a bit of a shock.
FWIW I think this blog was still popular and had plenty of legs in it, but I understand why you’ve all stopped. Our blog had about a single month where we were as popular as LP (due to one or the other of us saying something controversial) and it did our collective heads in. We swore then and there would go back to just being a blawg with a bit extra, rather than ‘something extra’ with law blogging added on.
And, even then, I wonder how long and how skillfully I’ll be able to keep writing as my client list grows and my time is taken up by the usual things that distract a practitioner.
I must say I’m heartened by the fact that your archive will remain. It sucked badly when great chunks of Catallaxy disappeared, so I’m really hoping that never happens to LP.
Vale!
J-Ro please come out of Joseph.Carey immediately.
Zabeel, I thunk you need a facebook page!
Pav, thanks for all the times I’ve been putting fingers to keyboard to reply to some tiresome troll needing 101 ‘splaining on a thread relating to gender issues, and have refreshed the page only to find a lucid comment nailing the point much better than I could have.
tssk@159
I’d add
05 poke 808,234
that disables the RUN/STOP and RESTORE keys
(808,100 for the V-20)
d
Thanks for the heads up re: Crikey, Jacques.
Oh, what a shame.
Wish you all the best!
(Will there be an incarnation when Abbott and Katter’s O-straya Party are burying the carcass that used to be the ALP?)
Cripes!
I got a lot out of this place.
There have been many truly magnificent posts, and in many cases I never even thought to give credit to the author before diving into the comments. Mea culpa.
But really, as someone has doubtless already said (in this case I rush to comment without reading the thread) the attraction of LP for me was always the prospect, often realised, of intelligent conversation.
That and filthy limericks.
And youtube linkfests.
And chicks with guns.
And no, a big fuckoff NO!!! to the idea that “social media” can even hope to engage someone like the me of 5 or 6 years ago (let alone now) in a similar way.
The warning signs were manifold – moniker play being disallowed, Mark largely wandering off, jpz flouncing (oh wait…) – but it’s still a bit of a shock.
Anyhoo, thanks.
Oh thanks Casey, I was about to say could all the Jinmaro sockpuppets please step forward and identify yourselves, but then I thought mebbe I’d flipped it.
FIrstly thanks to Mark, Kim, and the many other folks who moderated, posted and contributed to LP. It was my first excursion into the online world of comment and amused me as much as it informed and infuriated me.
Secondly, it does feel like we’re in a shark jumping moment. Spaces such as LP are being replaced by… what? I’m not sure. We can all name the venues – social media, Twitter, PInterest, whatever but the possibilities for much more than a wee bit of wit or venom don’t seem overly developed. We’re being increasingly guided to content – just not quite sure that most of us are that involved in producing it as we were in the halycon days around 2005-2007.
And lastly, a wail of horror – how the goodness gracious me shall I survive the next Fed election without somewhere to moan and gnash and rant? Nooooooo.
Sad to hear, I have often come here to read intelligent analysis of the days events and to keep some of the Limited news hacks in line. Thankyou you will be greatly missed.
Probably a good thing. The vibrant two-sided discussions have been one with Nineveh and Tyre for a couple of years now.
Paul,my sense of occasion causes me to reflect before I post on this momentous and sad occasion.
I would have posted a far more bland , but much less honest, comment had you not associated me with the people you have. I hope that you, or the people who hold me in auto-moderation will do me the dignity, or have the integrity, to post this comment without changing it.
I reflect first that I was one of LPs earliest posters – sometime in late 2005 or early 2006 I think.
I reflect then on some of the glorious stoushes it then had. Conducted with humour and passion, including as I recall, between Currency Lad, Catholic champion of Vatican I orthodoxy and papal infallibility and Homer, defender of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and enemy of popish obscurantism.
And between Fyodor and Jack Strocchi on just about anything, during which I was introduced to the Strocchiverse.
And I remember the glorious stoushes I was involved in, including with PeterW on the legality of the Vietnam War (on the basis of some obscure principles of equity as contained in NSW property law as I recall Peter advancing his argument).
And so many with Katz, in his early days, where, among other things he he advanced the proposition that the British occupation of Ireland in the 19th century was a benign and gentle thing (Mark B pointed out that over that period they passed over forty penal laws oppressing the Irish, which made that a highly dubious proposition) and Katz’s heroically advanced argument about South Korea’s patriotic refusal to engage in any form of trade with Japan after WW2 into the 1990s despite the production of ample evidence from impeccable sources that from an early stage after WW2 Japan was South Korea’s largest trading partner.
I remember too that wonderful stoush with Fran Barlow when in her debut on LP she advanced the bizarre proposition that the Americans were war criminals of the highest order who had deliberately delayed the end of WW2 so that they could develop an atomic bomb to attack Japan so as to frighten the russians and control the destiny of Europe on the basis that after Stalingrad WW2 the war was all over and everyone else could go home. Even Katz thought that was pure cr*p and said so with cogent arguments. So did you.
Fran’s magnificent advocacy of war crimes (starving children to death, perfidy in international relations as an ethical principle) then denial of what she said, remain with me as the supreme example of the moral relativism and superficiality of some the Left who have posted here.
500 glorious comments in hunting that one into the ground.
For the rest: good fun good things and good people,
Paul Burns, who should (if he remembers the thread) dye his hair green. I am sure it would be a good look.
Tigtog, forgiven at once for her intemperate, and highly out of charecter attack on Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone.
Kim, and I hope she bought that swimsuit that she was thinking about buying.
Anna Winter always.
PeterW, for despite our great stoush, and I had to have it for I was defending the Cambodians, tragic victims of Vietnam’s civil war, because he was, throughout the debate a good and decent person.
MarkB for always being a good and decent person and far more tolerant of me than I deserved.
And BrianB for being the same, but beyond that teaching me so much about science and climate change with so much care, consideration careful research. I rarely posted on his threads because I had little to say but much to learn from his posts and those of his contributors.
Casey, whose desire to improve me by the extraction of blood from my neck in my own best interest to make me human always held me in horrified fascination.
Katz overall ,who got better and better the longer he posted. In the end I could rarely disagree with him.
Yobbo, MarkL and Steve at the Pub, who LP were always been given a gracious hearing at LP.
And so many more.
Can we at least explore the previously mentioned idea of keeping LP going but with different people? Fran would be my first nomination. Mercurius is another for different reasons. Perhaps a wider range of posters could be included for the headline article.
It doesn’t have to be like the original LP but it could be. Add some advertising.
Last!
Oh ok, a haiku for the road.
Swedish ligsnigers
Sperm stolen by chicks with guns.
Purple thread of doom
C’mon, Nabakov, by my reckoning you’ve still got 399 words to play with
What you are experiencing there is an instance of the gothic sublime. It’s a kind of horror tinged with a kind of delightful pleasure. This is called “having a good time”. Next time a random on the internet offers to come to your door and bite you FOR FREE, don’t be an idiot. Say yes and be grateful.
Now here’s a purple hush.
FWIW, a small tribute at Bite my Latte.
Salient Green, nice idea, but as one of the people involved in keeping Webdiary going after Margo Kingston’s retirement, I’d have to say, No. The time and energy involved in running a site like LP (or Webdiary as it once was) is huge; the mental toll even greater. There will always be those who will deride on the basis that nostalgia was better in THEIR day.
Perhaps a new site, with an equally committed group of people (believe me, it takes a group, not just two or three enthusiasts) – but then, perhaps the time for this sort of site has passed.
I really hope that I’m wrong, but at this point I’m fresh out of ideas.
…and Dr. Cat and FDB and tssk of the Watercooler school of politics. Miss ye I shall.
Agree that corporatised “social” media is an oxymoron. Twitter is a cesspool and HeadFace is worse. But blogs are soooo noughties. There is much still to learn in the space between words.
Sniff, sniff, “peace be with you all”, their was never any incitement to violence or bigoted hatred of a conservative. Wahhhhhhhhh, I need a hug prefereably a group one everyone.
Yeah look y’all. Getting the band back together sounds terribly romantic and all but it only works if you wait twenty years for your former audience to get old and rich enough to afford all the remastered artfully packaged CDs and reunion tours you’re flogging to pay for your third divorce.
If you love something, set it free. Then it’ll shit on your head, fly aimlessly around in circles for a a while and then nest on your roof blocking the gutters.
Agree that Twitter, Facebook and the rest are not adequate substitutes, but also unsure what is. Feels similar to when Road To Surfdom died but worse. These days there doesn’t seem anything out there that comes close.
To those who made a welcoming space, to those delightful souls who inhabited it, to the banter and the politics.
For auld lang syne.
It was through LP that I began a series of posts on the media that became The Failed Estate. LP has been an essential blog, full of wit, wisdom and insight rarely seen in the mainstream media. It leaves a large void. Indeed, it is tempting to see its departure as another symbol of encroaching darkness as the forces of an increasingly irrational and reactionary Right run rampant. Haere Ra.
Well I was just here for the sex and drugs. And chicks with guns. I could have done without the postings.
And frequently did.
“If you love something, set it free. Then it’ll shit on your head, fly aimlessly around in circles for a a while and then nest on your roof blocking the gutters.”
Y’know Nabs, I was going to say (actually wrote out and deleted) that there ought to be some kind of free-for-all here. Where moderation is switched off, and folks can party like it’s 2005-8.
Now I really AM saying it.
Monsieur Le Chesteur, s’il vous plaît, a little temps du jouer…?
Are you sure your closure won’t be interpreted as another nail in the coffin of the ALP, ahead of the total routing of Julia Gillard at the next election? LP has been a good counterweight to the conservative voices around the traps.
Certainly leaves a void in my life.
“that there ought to be some kind of free-for-all here.”
Salient Green @182 Yeah, agree. Come on Fran, give it some thought. You too Mercurius, and others.
No, leave advertising out of it, that’s the same narcotic that drives the media.
I’ll be always grateful to all the LPers out there for teaching me so much about politics and ways of the world.
LP was gave me a place to vent my rage at the inescapable doofosity of Oz politics after I moved to Europe in 05. It’s feels kinda weird that it is winding up as I finally move back to Oz and will actually be living the doofusnessishness first hand. At least in Oz people will (kinda) understand what I mean when I start drunkenly ranting at the pub about how much of a prick Tony Abbott is.
Thanks to Mark and the collective for bringing me in back in ’07. It feels like yesterday, but it’s been five years! Hopefully now that I’m moving back to Oz I’ll get to meet a few more of you in person.
Best of luck to everyone in their future projects. I’ll be continuing to never quite get around to blogging at “Brissie to Brizzle and everywhere in between” as I have been for the last four years or so.
I’m toasting your history LP and wanna give a shout out to the condemnathons, the writing challenges and the lymerics.
I’m with nabs @197
That and Higginses.
I condemn the fact LP didn’t finish with a condemnation thread. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of feelgood endings. Though I do feel Tarkovsky’s Stalker would have been much improved by a big musical finale. With Cossack dancing.
Also, fuck the Pharaoh.
Thanks, LP! I’ll miss you a lot. My girlfriend won’t
As Ned Kelly said on the gallows:: ” I suppose it had to come to this”
Ok FXH, one last stoush. I believe Ned’s last words were actually “Such is moderation.”
2005 – doesn’t seem that long ago, really. All the very best, Mark – there were some fine times, and it was always good to have a broadly left-leaning sounding board (“I wonder what LP will make of {insert controversial issue of the day here}?“). If you’re ever reconsidering a HR job, give me a bell.
Anyone referenced Popper yet?
…and, Nab, that Aliens snippet is just pure genius.
“Australia desperately needs a one-stop portal for left wing views, analysis and opinions.”
Dear God, just open any newspaper besides the Telegraph….
Will miss you all, particularly Brian’s Climate Clippings. I have not often commented but lurked regularly and relied on LP to get some intelligent ( and humorous) debate.
Thanks to all of you
Thank you all for the hard work and erudition that has been my delight, education and illumination since I wandered onto this site. I have been amazed at all the things I have learnt as a result.
May those who made it possible find something to do that is as much fun as this has been for them.
Thank you again.
dear friends
questioning where our technology is leading/pushing us (e.g. are facebook/twitter suitable successor technologies for lp redux?) reminds me i’ve been re-reading marshall mcluhan, on and off for the past year or so, and this is my last chance to make a shameless plug for the continuing relevance of mcluhan to understanding the effects of media on society: entertainment, education, economy, politics. even at this late stage when centuries pass in the space of decades.
mcluhan foresaw our present situation, in outline, some 50 years ago, when he observed the convergence of computers & satellite telephony and extrapolated from this something uncannily similar to the internet. “in effect, it will replicate the art of drama”, he said, to a student, in a short exchange, “it will make the whole world a stage, everyone will do their thing”. sound familiar?
to me the best short introduction to mcluhan’s philosophy is (believe it or not) the playboy interview of 1969:-
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring07/mcluhan.pdf
its comprehensive, intelligent and cogent; mcluhan at his most focussed & least aphoristic responding to a series of sensitive questions. the interviews really were the best part of that rag.
“understanding media” (1964) is an extended philosophical essay, with a series of applied case studies examining different media forming the bulk of it. The pdf file linked is not paginated, but looks like being the entire text of “understanding media”:-
http://beforebefore.net/80f/s11/media/mcluhan.pdf
an outstanding “free bargain”, for a classic media studies text. i had to get a book from the friends of the library sale to read it, now its free & electric for all to download & enjoy.
“the gutenberg galaxy” (1961) is good too but not free & electric like the two above. and, in the “space between words” (salute, Mercurius) for those who prefer to hear, there’re audio files of mcluhan available at ubuweb, for one.
from mcluhan:-
“the medium is the message”
“the global village”
“media hot & cool”
“the tribal drum”
[misapprehending social change through] “the rear view mirror”
and, at somewhat greater length:-
“we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us”
“acoustic space has the basic character of a sphere whose focus or centre is simultaneously everywhere and whose margin is nowhere”
“the medium, or process, of our time – electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action”
“today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression”
i can’t get enough mcluhan these days. i hope someone else finds him, through these links, helpful.
all the best to everyone, ta
alfred vension
Thanks tssk, the very thing!
I was wondering why Easter Sunday wasn’t lazy…
_ .. . _ _ _ _ . !
I’m sure it was Ned who said, ” we shape our own tools”
I wasn’t there, it was a bit before my time.
Many thanks for being a Left blogging beacon for the last 7 years. Your presence on the interwebz will be missed.
Special thanks for both reposting some of our stuff from Left Flank & arguing hard when you disagreed with us too!
Best wishes to you all.
Gunna miss the Saturday Salon tid-bits, the thoughtful posts, especially Brian’s clippings. Thanks for all your hard work and thoughts.
Mark.
Not too sure about Ned but to quote Ben Cousins’ stomach, “Such is life”.
And just to stir things up stoushwise, not going to miss some
of you seriously unworldy young insects. If you don’t know who you are by now, then you never will. On the other hand, I’ve met some great smartarse pirates of life here.
On another note, here’s a great slice of female energy which I think also deftly and elegantly captures what I did like about LP’s zesty coven in full flight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57SKGZEDFSY
Yeah, I was really only here for the dames*. And LP had at its thready peak, some thunderously smart, brave and funny women I’d be happy to share a trench/lifeboat/shell hole/bed/carpet strolling office/space station with – under any scenario/metaphor.
*My favourite male LPers clearly shared the same vibe. Never mind all the political shit, LP at its best had some lovely male/female thoughtful, worldly, bloody funny and charged interplay, rarely glimpsed on other group blogs of the time.
And if women and men can’t make eachother laugh on purpose, then I venture to suggest their world’s gonna be fucked. Badly.
LP begun a slow death with its first words. Never reached any heights. Never revealed any truths. Entertained some addle brained commenters below the line. For most I’d say it was a surprise to read today that you were still here. Lights out now for gawd’s sake
For me it’s bittersweet. I’m sad that LP is ending, but I’m happy that my “permanent moderation” has ended. I must be the only leftie placed in “permanent moderation” here.
My most memorable moment was getting threatened with moderation for arguing against the right of Sikh kids to “run with scissors.”
Well Silkie, anyone who is pleased that their “permanent moderation” is ending because the place that placed ‘em in such a place is ending is someone I’d suggest would make a great fall guy for the Three Stooges – all total spluttering and honking fall guys themselves. Yeah, it’s one last meta-insult at you.
Go in peace. Or pieces.
LP……..gone?
Say it ain’t so! I’d even forgive this being a 9-days-late April Fools, if it meant we got to keep LP.
*sadface*
All the best to everyone here who made LP a part of Australian internet culture for a while, even if we disagreed on many issues. Most issues actually, but at least debate and discussion makes people think about their own position on the board game.
Thanks for the effort Mark and team.
God bless you all!
Shirley, the occasion calls for http://a grog blog, or 7
Brisso bar du jour the boundary, west end?
Possible date to synchronise shouts – a gesture to the alleged Brisso provenance of the blog – Saturday 28/4: we’ll be having local elections that day, getting our chance to vote for the esteemed
Andrew Bartlett (upthread @144), who’ll look spectacular in ermine and chains, as mayor
and there’ll be the 15+% margin-burning by-election for Anna Bligh’s seat (which includes above pub, not that she’s ever seen there), it’ll be wall to wall tory triumphalism for the foreseeable future.
Last drinks indeed.
Nabakov @223:
+1
link for above
http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/bloggers-beer-and-melbourne-this-thursday/
Lukim Yu, LP !
Thanks greatly Salient@182 and Geoff for the vote of confidence. It’s a lovely idea, but maintaining a blog like this really would be a major undertaking, even with the admirable Mercurius as a partner in the venture. You do really need a few really committed folks.
It does have appeal though because it has become a part of my life too, and I’m not keen on Facebook. I really have enjoyed hanging out here, even (or perhaps especially) when ‘stoushing’. Well it’s a mix isn’t it. People like Viv and Merc and Brian and Robert have been great to bounce off.
I am contemplating starting my own blog — I guess I’ll have to reflect on exactly how I could foster the kind of engagement with others on the left that would make it worthwhile.
is not larvatus prodeo a drug? won’t people here feel withdrawal when this joint is closed?
alfred vension
This is horrible news.
Many thanks to Mark et al for sustaining what was for me an invaluable site for opinion and intelligent analysis.
Brian, your CC posts were a highlight.
Raspberry to Anna for not posting more often
Can someone email me and let me know where you may be blogging individually?
Bye
Mark has noted in the post where various of us are/will be blogging. There is also the LP authors page, which contains links to other sites where members of the collective have chosen to add them.
Thanks alfred venison for rasing the matter of saying goodbye again. No, not a drug, however reading LP was often the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night. So, on the basis that saying goodbye properly is an important life skill, and after sleeping on it, I’ll say goodbye again more fully: LP was important to me personally as a space where I found a large number of people equally concerned with sustaining and developing a democracy worthy of the name and a planet fit to inhabit. It was a point of reference through my most bitter union fight, a sacking and another separation.
Such conversations become personally important because only through dialogue are we able literally find the words to express how we feel and what we think. The reflexive act of understanding what we are saying brings us into being as democratic agents in the public sphere. No other blog provides the same robust service.
Heartfelt and warmest thanks to the blog owners. Apologies for any offence I ever caused to anyone. Thanks to everyone. BTW: Katz is the only person I’ve ever read actually capable of saying anything significant within 140 words.
I shall miss many of you but am confident that I’ll see you around the traps.
There will be more such initiatives because
…because they are now a necessary part of the structures of our lives…
Just a correction, FDB,
TT pointed out many times, including just recently, that we encouraged moniker play as long as the same avatar was kept. That was for the noobs. Moniker play was never disallowed (unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean by that.)
There is, of course, a lot of huffing and puffing about how LP had to die because everyone who disagreed was thrown into the oubliette so it became an echo chamber. This of course is a ridiculous claim as anyone who has read an actual LP thread will know. However, some people who have been needlessly vexatious or repetitive have been automodded. For this I refer to Making Light and Crooked Timber, blogs which have been going longer than LP has, have longer comment threads – at least, ML does – and show no sign of closing. These blogs both have clearly defined and active moderation. John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow and Theresa Neilsen Hayden in particular (Making Light) have written about the need for moderation on a group blog so that the threads don’t become a soup of repetitive abuse – ahem, no names, no pack drill, but looking at unmodded / rightwing blogs, I see much of the “echo chamber” effect that they imagine they see here. People who disagree are simply abused and don’t bother to post. I guess that is something we’ll always have to disagree with the Right on.
Well, there’s no point in some of us joining in the expressions of shock, horror and nostalgia.
We’ve been banned for months.
[And yet we can still fish you out of the killfile at a time like this, because it has always been regularly checked for false positives ~ mod]
My policy is never to interfere with the day to day running of blogs, especially moderation policy. I may be a tyrant, but I am a very liberal and propertarian tyrant.
I did catch a glance of the mod list while trying to change a different setting for tigtog though. It’s … intense.
Helen #239, thanks for picking up on the “moniker play disallowed” claim. If I may clarify further, the problem came with the need (due to disruption of comments threads by serial morphers) to activate an extra discussion management setting, which meant that all first-time commentors were automatically moderated until one of their comments was approved by a moderator. This setting caught any alteration to a commentor’s name, email address, IP number or website URL, thus anybody engaging in moniker play with a new moniker is automodded.
Moderators have always approved these good-faith moniker-play posts ASAP, but since we are volunteers who simply are not around 24/7, sometimes those posts could languish in moderation for a while, meaning that our savvier commentors quickly tended to give up on the idea.
If there weren’t so many vexatious serial morphers intent on sockpuppeting and otherwise disrupting good-faith discussions, then activating that setting would never have been necessary. However, without a 24/7 moderators roster, there was no other way to handle them.
It’s been a long time since one could post under a novel moniker with the same email address without going into moderation.
To illustrate, I just got an email from jpz, so I’ll now post it under his name.
drumroll….
japerz says…
Three loud cheers for the skipper, officers and crew of the good ship LP. You folks have been lucid, thought-provoking and entertaining to an extent rarely seen in the blogosphere. I’d go so far as to say that in its prime, LP was easily the coolest site on the tubes. You should be proud.
One last limerick before I go…
So, LP’s on eternal vacation.
What a loss for your whole charming nation.
You’ve been cheeky and bold,
Which is worth more than gold;
Worth still more, is superb conversation.
*Parthian rim-shot*
Hit it, boys — (cheesy musical intro)
THE BOYS FROM THE CHORUS:
Oh, we’re the Boys from the Chorus,
We hope you liked the show.
There’s no “I” in “glorous,”
And now we have to gooooooo….
love,
zenger
Larvatus Prodeo has been a great contribution to political debate and commentary in Australia. It will be missed.
The subject I’ve been meaning to blog about for the past two months: why I find the gay marriage debate alienating.
Vale LP.
I am surprised to learn it’s coming to an end. Although I don’t share the politics of the majority of those who have posted here, you’ve certainly given me something to think about, (along with a few good laughs), over the last three years.
Looks like our comments crossed, FDB. You are quite correct, however the effect on moniker play was a side-effect, not a policy goal.
Jacques, we did work hard to make LP a civil place that encouraged participation. Moderation has a number of facets, too various to go into here. Without an extended exposition of all facets I don’t think it’s fair to make judgements on our policies and how they were implemented.
For example, it wasn’t just a matter of serial offenders. There were some cases where regular commenters came up with an occasional comment that was quite problematic. There was one case where I argued twice for release from moderation because of a record of very acceptable commenting, and then the commenter offended quite gloriously within a day or two.
All that being said there is an element of subjectivity, within each moderator over time and between moderators. And there were particular threads and topics that were difficult and I felt it better to leave problematic comments for the thread owner to rule. That didn’t always happen in what one would call a reasonable time frame.
BTW I left a comment at Catallaxy last night and was surprised to find it moderated. It was about Rob saying he attacked me personally which I don’t remember at all.
When the ‘Blairite’ community was destroyed by Tim Blair ‘s blog moving the commercial premises, there were those on this site who were sympathetic to the loss of that community.
I offer you all my own sympathies with the closure of this community. May you find another, those who wish it.
Thanks for some interesting stoushes, and for providing me with that most valuable thing, information on how different perceptions work. Quite seriously, that’s been professionally rewarding.
Warmest Regards
Mk50 of Brisbane
(Formerly MarkL of Canberra)
Brian;
It wasn’t my intention to cast aspersions. I was just commenting on what I saw. The intersection of LP’s moderations policy and your attractiveness to a certain brand of troll means that you’d need more policing than a lot of places. I just hadn’t realised how much.
First-comment rule, would be my guess. Each site tracks that individually.
I don’t think my comments in this thread have, so far, struck a particularly generous tone. So let me put in my two bits.
Speaking for myself, I’m going to miss the old warhorse. There were many occasions on which I read the first third of an article and shook my head, but on the whole the standard of writing was excellent. I made sure to visit LP every day or two to ensure my horizons weren’t narrowing too much.
When I was approached to take on LP’s hosting requirements I felt particularly chuffed that folk with such divergent views on well … almost everything … were prepared to place their trust in such a notorious running dog. Tigtog acted as the LP collective’s de facto ambassador and I think we had a smooth working relationship.
It’s been fun. Good luck to all of you.
I’ve only able to pop in and out of LP occasionally for the last year or so, but I’m going to miss you all! Well, almost all. And I’ll try to drop in on some of those other places listed.
Thank you for the the wit, the humanity, the zest for ideas. And FTR I never felt unwelcome for being female (or even evangelical Christian).
God’s blessings and/or perfect cafe lattes to you all!
mediaplayer @ 145,
I have a blog.(Click on my avatar to get there.) I haven’t posted since I came out of hospital last year (I was blind till February) but will be getting back to it once I’ve absorbed the whack of material on slavery in 18C Virginia I’m currently wading through. Have about twelve more books and a fair few articles to read yet, and will probably ruminate on thought processes on line once that’s done.
Don’t remember the green hair comment.
LP is addictive and I for one will have withdrawals. My first comment on this thread was that of a stunned mullet.
Jacques, I would unreservedly recommend you as benevolent webhosting tyrant for any ozblogger looking for new digs, no matter what they blog about. You have absolutely been a pleasure to work with.
And one day the curious might visit archived blogs like this and shake their head at the nonsense written by the ‘educated’ about global warming driven by carbon dioxide.
Sorry. name, not avatar…
…Green Mullet!!!….
Jacques @ 251, yes we’ve been attractive to a certain type of troll and have operated for a very long time and with traffic levels higher than for some other blogs.
No-one has mentioned LP in exile to which we escaped on two occasions, through the quick footwork of Viv. The first, from memory, was when the blog crashed before the 2007 election. I’ve always thought that wasn’t an accident.
I’ve just checked and the last time we went there the first post was about Gillard seeing the GG to call the 2010 election. Just a coincidence, I suppose!
Sad
I too got a lot from here. Top quality posts that you rarely see in MSM.
And usually very good commentary by thoughtful posters (I didn’t have a working killfile for LP but was not really needed – unlike many others where one just can’t read the comments without wading through incredible troll noise for a small signal or a functioning killfile/STFU script)
I will most miss Brian’s Climate Clippings.
Similarly, the coal seam coverage here has been superlative.
/hat tip
(Fran’s blog, yes please as I’ve always found your posts well argued and thought out and the topics of interest to me)
Ma perché?!!!!!!!! Non è il 21 dicembre ancora …… porco miseria!
@211, at your service …..
Popper 1998, Essay 7, § 17
Profound thank you to Mark and Brian for the ride. My gratitude goes to you and all the hardworking posters, contributors and moderators which helped to provide us with the experience in your own time. I salute my fellow commenters for all the fun, aggrievedness, insights and silliness we shared and for bearing with me. Baci a tutti!
Allora giochiamo. Per voi salti in mia automobile.
Oh we’re doing youtube of the end of the world are we? Let’s do this then.
Dave MacRae @260 said:
I’m pleased you found them so. I’ve enjoyed the passion in your posts too. If I decide to author a blog, I’ll tweet it …
@fran_b__
And its
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ya_Gq8d4Q
from them.
Thanks to all involved (including comment providers) for LP. It’s been fun.
Actually it’s the nude blogging I miss.
Well, it’s kind of perfect that LP would end now.
I used to come here to find angles and interpretations on events that I hadn’t thought of. But I also learned, never having been much of a joiner, that the ‘left’ wasn’t the place I had thought: the place of superior values, more attention to information, better analysis, more civilised debate. I found just as much one-eyed nastiness as I had noticed on the right. I often saw the left as, say, supporters of One Nation saw it. So, it changed my sense of where my political home is.
Then a few years ago I simply turned off the TV for good, and stopped listening to the radio news because it just became too weird. What was the point of shouting back at a screen? And in W.A. we had a really atrocious state ALP government, followed by a better Lib/National one …. all very confusing. Party platforms, policies, philosophies seem to mean very little on either side. We’re somehow post-ideologically floating along, pushed here and there by money and power, and having to decide with each election who to vote for. Not what party, that doesn’t seem to mean much, but which group of individuals will be the least bad.
It’s a very strange feeling for me that as someone who has always considered myself ‘left’ I may well give my vote to the Libs in the next state election (not the federal!). When I start to pull back in horror – the Liberals! – I remind myself that this Liberal government is better than an ALP one would likely be. Actually if the Nationals stood in Fremantle I would vote for them. Would I have ever believed that, up to a few years ago?!
So, having played its part in my political homelessness, LP evaporates, leaving me wondering and waiting.
Thanks to Mark and Kim for presiding over a space that had some great discussions.
Speak for yourself, Nabs. I always wore at least underwear when commenting …
Yeah but, what about the three cats hanging off you, some with fangs embedded, tres gross DI (nr).
Are you going to resurrect your blog? Where do we go to follow the progress of your doomstead?
Good riddance. You shall not be missed.
Someone give “johno” a hug!
Then they’ll don their flippers and swim to work.
Jennifer @256. Noted. Of course your comment becomes a part of the archive, and lies in wait for someone to observe that Dr Marohasy was significantly wrong about climate change.
Actually I hope you are proven right, but it does not seem to be going your way so far.
Since the ship is going down, it’s the correct time to slip a discreet note in Nabakov’s hand, since no one will notice it, all are distracted by the band playing “Nearer My God to Thee”.
The crumpled missive, written in haste, told him that he was, in her humble opinion, the most enigmatic and interesting of posters at LP.
Your persona as a boulevardier and bon vivant rang true and were intruiging to me.
May you continue on your mysterious paths and be the ultimate epicurian for us all!
Thank you also, Mark & Co.
You weren’t alone AK. Now there was a creature all hot in tooth and claw. Some wild thing off the heaths. No alleycat should ever again be let loose upon the blog like that again, all single minded charm and wit and song lists. For the love of god, even J-ro fell for him. That was rather painful to behold, but nevertheless, a testament to the critter’s extraordinary pheramones.
I will miss the comedy of the left whining about Abbott on this blog. The real problem was much closer to home but then I forgot it was Abbott’s fault.
casey, your memory fails you though your obsession with moi is as sturdy as ever. I rarely if ever conversed with Nabs on this blog though I did enjoy his writing. On a personal level it was all one sided bullying by him of me, something I typically ignored because I could see how much he got off on it.
No the only anti-left male on LP who ever set my pulse racing in a nice way was the delectably louche Islamophobe and Zionist, Rob. Crazy, eh. But that was a long time ago.
Things are still going downhill since your announcement of the demise of this blog – NOW I FIND OUT ANDREW BOLT BARRACKS FOR RICHMOND!! What next?
P.S. To pedants (and also to pendants!) – Ciao for now – meouw.
Well Nabs never set my heart a-flutter, though IRL he nearly stopped it with scotch one evening.
I thought Sideshow Bazarov was your Lothario of choice though Casey. Now you’ve gone and hurt his feelings.
Goodbye, Lavatory Rodeo. You won’t br missed
Thank you LP and good luck with all future ventures.
Have truly appreciated LP and all herein. My compliments to everyone. A real privilege to participate. To Mark – a special thank you. Respect.
Sincerely Pauline Gambley (aka Fascinated)
Oh no you loved him Jinmaro. He just didn’t return your ardour. Even when you were parading your fat lips on that avatar and calling yourself Phil. And lest everyone suspect my powers have waned, behold: I extracted you out of Joseph.Carey.
Someone give Ken up there a big hug too.
I have no idea what you are talking about FDB. Everyone knows I loved JPZ. Everyone.
Winston said:
We spent far more time troubled at the ALP. That’s what you really missed.
“Ken” tried:
Just 7 morphemes and one is a typo.
Your inability to resist coming here to tell us of your lack of interest is noted. Plainly, you will miss us.
You’re an idiot casey. But I always knew that.
Please Fran, let me tell you what I will miss as you wouldn’t know. How could you? Not only will I miss the left whining about Abbott I will also miss your long winded pieces of rubbish, particularly the ones where you correct everyone and tell them what they are really thinking.
Good riddance all you fucking lying fucking tax-eating fucking anti-semitic fucking Commo cunts! If I don’t smash you on your shins and shoulders rest assured you’ll all drift off into the void as the Earth epands and the force of gravity diminishes!
Winston, I’m not whinng about Abbott. With the help of the bad examples set by the current crop of Tory Premiers, he will snatch defeat fron the jaws of an otherwise inevitable victory next year.
Winston tried:
.
It’s nice that you acknowledge that even what you regard as my “longwinded rubbish” is enlightening to you. Such candour on the web is the exception rather than the rule.
Some people are pretty transparent so it’s not hard to work them out — people such as you for example. Still, tidiness and all that.
Thanks once again for your feedback.
That wouldn’t be the real jinmaro @ 286, would it? Would it, j?
Will miss you, LP. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. Mark and Kim in particular – bon voyage, and no hard feelings.
See you at the next branch meeting, Jinmaro.
Still can’t post, even to say goodbye. Sigh.
[Well, you see, you just did ~ mod]
OK, it’s time to admit it. I have met Jack Strocchi. In October 2003, I was at my local, the Red Brick Hotel in Woolloongabba Queensland, reading The Brothers Karamazov, when a lean, trimly groomed and bearded, 30-something man engaged me in conversation about what I was reading. He went on to opine about his love of Dostoyevsky and the Bible, his changes of opinion about the war in Iraq, the fact that he had voted Liberal in the 2001 Federal election, and his disdain for what he regarded as postmodernist hegemony in the contemporary Left. I shared one beer with him whilst conversing in this mode, then politely declined his invitation to continue the drinking and conversation as I had not planned on devoting my Friday evening to an extended conversation with this intelligent, opinionated and very intense individual.
Winston@287 I’ll let Fran respond if she cares to, but comment myself that I understand you have difficulty understanding her deeper analysis of matters, , delivered in such exquisite terms, that you might struggle to make sense of it.
On another point, not everyone here is of the left. A good number of folks actually lean to the right and this adds to debate. As far as Abbott goes, and speaking for myself and my right-tilted mates, the prospect of an Abbott led government is frightening. Turnbull yes, Abbott no. And I know of no person in my circle of friends that support Abbott.
Ootz, yes, I’ll resurrect the orphan, and be a bit more assiduous in posting.
On a lighter note, I’ve always enjoyed Our Jennifer’s drive-bys. Tell me, Dr Marohasy, are you a liar or a fool? Enquiring minds want to know.
My two cents.
Sad to see LP go but predictable with the increasing irrelevance of left wing politics (and this from an old lefty).
No it is you who is wrong.
This blog gave me hope for Australia during the bad old days of last decade. And even made me feel a little proud of Brisbane. Thanks to all of you, on behalf of the lurkers. Let’s please make sure that all the epic threads are preserved as a window into history for future generations
Exactly why this blog is only good for humour. Thanks Geoff, thanks Fran. Pointless to the end.
I am a bit curious about the seeming concensus that blogging in general is over. I don’t think that at all.
As a constant facebooker I think it is a crap platform for the more open ended discussion you get on blogs, if only because the friend structure. Identity issues are not so limiting there are an infinite number of obvious fake names on FB.
Blogs are organic, they grow adapt and have a life span. I’ve had several blogs on specific interests that ran for years but petered out. I think it is more a case of exactly where this particular virtual community will move to, it’s a bit like a pub closing – remember the Criterion, anyone? A lot already hang around Quiggins but really it needs a blog with a few contributors. Fran and Mercurius would be a start. Ikonoclast?
sorry consensus sorry sorry sorry
LOL, this thread has woken the dead.
On the death of the left, yes, I recall these same comments at the latham lowpoint: three years before Howard lost his own seat and his pants in 2007.
HEY Merc, get a real job. Moocher.
Norto – that story sounds too good to be true.
Are you sure it wasn’t Jerzei Balowski?
Unbanned at last!
Twas fun while it lasted.
Thanks y’all
xx
danny @229 re: drinks.
I’ll try to get there, if possible.
Email me.
Vale to LP
The finest blog to ever
Diss Missy Higgins
And I made an amusing “menage a trois” gag at some point, which received acclaim from Fyodor (the Ozblogosphere’s equivalent of the Riksbank’s prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) [the acclaim, not Fyodor himself, although he's worthy of the gong]. I hope that makes it to the archives, as a a counterpoint to JM’s contribution.
I’m not sure that anybody has claimed that exactly – merely that this particular sort of group blog acting as an information/discussion hub is no longer at a cutting edge, which once such blogs were.
Brian@259: “No-one has mentioned LP in exile”..
Umm, au contraire, (no snark intended B, big time fan here) just not flagged as such, upthread as
MultiSite Synchronised ValeLP GrogBlog suggestion.
http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/bloggers-beer-and-melbourne-this-thursday/
Brian, if I might remind you, (and those future scholars looking at the social media revolution/ environmental vandalism nexus of futility of the noughties): here at LP the historic issue of qld coal seam gas exploitation has been taken seriously since at least 09/09 ( barakula state forest guest post)
… ‘Course, those were more innocent times, smaller local issues could be and were treated as if they mattered…. 3 days later, 12/09 this side of the dateline, the LP saturday salon thread went to 1,980 comments….
6 months earlier, the coal for breakfast issue was given a platform here, and, even earlier, 12/10/2008, we got a serving state MP, then opposition, putting himself on the public record advocating to “protect good productive agricultural land from being lost to coal mines”. He’s a minister now.
Those particular campaigns, aided & abetted here, have had what might be scored an, albeit limited, perhaps pyrrhic (ptp), victory….
Last week new qld Natural Resources and Mines Minister Andrew Cripps went to press that
who are working up a new system of statutory regional planning to set out areas appropriate for mining, the Darling Downs a priority
Just maybe being on the case here, and staying with it, helped. Thanks Brian. Now can you get onto rehabilitating the brigalow scrub, with all that gorgeous nitrogen fixing….
I see what you did there, Merc @ 299.
Goodbye, Farewell and good riddance to closed minded, elitiest, bitchy wankers.
OTB, maybe you should visit catalepsy, Bolt or Blair? Those sites are very inclusive, encourage debate and aren’t in anyway offensive or bitchy.
And still they come! More proof, if proof were needed of the lack of grace of many on the right.
God, I get a bit sick of hearing these pathetic complaints about how “I’m of the left but, well, I think I’ll vote for the LNP”. It is just disingenuous to the point of being Nixonian. At least the “haters” like johno just let it all out.
…and sublime cowgirl, au revoir!
—-
Nice to see that jumpy stayed classy to the last.
I’ve taught a few students like jumpy. As they have nothing worthwhile or interesting to contribute, they sit up the back and make fart noise by cupping a hand in their armpit and flapping the opposite arm. This gets them the attention they crave, and they get their jollies from disrupting the class. But it quickly palls, and, when they inevitably get kicked out, a palpable sense of relief floods the room: at last, come the murmurs, finally we can get some work done.
The next lesson, the fake farters do it all again.
This sort of behaviour is regrettable yet understandable, in a 12-year old…
…but what’s jumpy’s excuse?
@319
So they’re “farters” not “haters”?
Currently experiencing the “Brian from SPACED” stages of grieving/painting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhUMRgZjKr8
All good things.
Well done one and all. Only recently became aware of LP and it became quickly the blog of choice for opinion I value. Now you’re gone too soon, too young, sob! Particularly appreciated Climate Clippings and Robert Merkel’s Brunswick tinged views on matters climatic. All the best but not to get too solemn. I think the video of the Last Post (Failed) posted above is a pretty good way to go out.
“God, I get a bit sick of hearing these pathetic complaints about how “I’m of the left but, well, I think I’ll vote for the LNP”.
Hearing, but not listening? To the results in W.A., then N.S.W. then Queensland? I heard Swan say that the coming budget would have tax cuts for business, and also cuts to government programs – in other words a Howard/Costello budget.
In W.A. as much as I wanted to see the end of a despicable ALP government I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the Libs, I just didn’t vote ALP. But like many people I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the coalition government, so come the next election, given that the state ALP seems just as despicable as it was, I might vote Greens 1, Liberal 2. As Keynes said – when the facts change, I change my mind.
Goodbye, LP.
my vengeful side still hopes for the deaths of Tigtog, Lauredhel et al but then one always lives in hope
The police came to the door cause of my Internet posing and lying a few weeks ago. My Mum showed them my medical records and proof of my real life disability. They told Mum that they had investigated and while I hadn’t done anything illegal, it was concerning. One of the police officers is coming to the house to teach me proper use of the Internet in the next couple of weeks.
Paul Austin #324, all I have ever asked of you is that you stop harassing people online with your “posing and lying”. How sadly predictable that you wish for my death in return.
Mercurius said:
In my experience the behaviour is common in students who feel that they are out of their depth — that they are expected tp work outside their personal comfort zone. Wrecking the lesson aids cognitive dissonance, replacing pain and angst with reward. That may help explain Jumpy‘s conduct as well.
One management strategy for students suffering in this way is to work out what they can do and divide up the space between that and what you aim to achieve until they can get there. Shorten the gap between positive behaviour and a marker followed by some reward — it could simply be attention or a cute sticker. You might affirm something they are good at and make some part of the lesson demand that skill.
Sadly, you can’t really do that on a blog.
Russell @323, if the polls are to believed, next year we are likely to see the most right-wing government in Australia’s history voted in for what voters believe to be left-wing reasons.
I’d like to thank Paul Austin for reminding us that it’s not all nostalgia and lipsniggers.
[belongs on the Salon thread, please]
Take it to Saturday Salon, akn.
Paul – no, if we have the Libs in government it will be because the ALP government wasn’t able to convince the electorate that it was worth keeping as a government. Those on the left will be angry at their stance on refugees, gay marriage, and not reversing Howard’s gifts to the rich etc, those on the right will hope to reverse big new taxes, and those in between will believe that they have been lied to or manipulated a little too much.
@323
You’ve been going about about the “despicable” ALP govt. in WA for a while now. What was your beef with them? As far as I can tell putting in the rail link was a pretty successful project and other than that it was BAU. I don’t see that the Libs have done much except funnel a large pile of cash towards the “regions” to pay for NP support and Barnett is busily progressive repealing laws like dope decriminalisation without any reason to and shielding incompetents like Johnston.
Then there’s James Price Point. Or the recent enthusiasm for paying for FMGs legal bills should they mount a self-serving HC challenge What about Woodside people working the Barnett’s office?
All in all I find your claim to be progressive somewhat disingenuous. Anyone concerned for the environment preferencing the Libs over the ALP is just not very good at hedging their bets. Perhaps you like bell towers?
This partisan election racecalling stuff is getting off topic for this thread too, y’all. Belongs on the Salon.
Anna Winter @ 328: (if this makes it through) –
Heh heh. Now you know why I have to blog-comment all the way in freakin’ Australia.
btw, wish everyone the best, but you and Kim in particular. Always a joy to disagree with!
zenger
@319,320. Jumpy (in my Car) a farter???
More like the cheeky, always up to no good and too clever for himself of a lad. The kind of smart enough to ask the wrong question only to pull faces behind your back, instead of listening, then proceeds to pull the plait of the girl on the next desk, then drops the ball in the wrong moment.
As to OnTheBus, this is more the kind of your average farter, who in blogging terms could be ascribed as cheap to buy astroturf. Like the hardly normal breaks on SBS, increasing entropy in action – built in redundancy.
If you go back to one of the last threads still alive there you will come across a bunch of engineers from diverse industries. Each one of them probably a leader in their own field. Even their professional banter turns up the kind of relevant goodies that you won’t get in the msm ‘mushed-up’ infotainment slop. Never mind having access to their applied collective experiences and quality professional opinion. Thank you JohnD, BilB, Huggy et al. for your contribution. It would be of interest to know where you plan to ‘transfer your online capacity’ to.
“All in all I find your claim to be progressive somewhat disingenuous.” well, exactly. As I said about LP, it showed me that many people think of themselves as progressive, but there’s an awful lot that I don’t have in common with them.
I progressed on from the ALP to the Greens some time ago, but when it comes to having to mark the ballot paper with my second preference, I’ll be mainly thinking about how the alternatives would actually work out. Which means certainly not giving a vote to the federal Libs! For the Senate I can vote Green, but maybe in the Reps I’ll abstain.
There are many things the Barnett government has done which I disagree with, but I don’t find them disgusting.
Thanks j_p_z! All the best to you too!
(Oh wait, I mean, no YOU ARE WRONG.)
Goodbye LP, you’ll be missed. Particularly Brian and your Climate Clippings, but nearly always there was something interesting and challenging here.
Nuclear threads of doom, I wont miss ‘em.
helen, my apologies if I’ve ever been personal and nasty about forestry, no offence ever intended. I appreciate your motivation.
Adios!
I would hate for my last ever comment(*) ever on LP to be directed to Merc [sic] or Francine Barlow [sic], so it will be to Ootz; you are smarter than those two combined and i’ll throw in adrian for free.
I sense you’ve “been there,done that” in situations that I might like to be in and do (and no doubt some I wouldn’t)
Keep yourself well Ootz.
And Brian/Brain, you too.
(* As last commenter on Climate Clippings as well )
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
(Actually this is one of the most famous bloody speeches in the whole goddamn language, and if you don’t know it by heart already, then you should log off immediately and go read it right NOW instead of lurking here on the intertubes; as I’ve said before, I wrote on this blog not so much for the other commenters (though that was fun!) but for the sake of the adventurous open-minded teenage smart-arses hidden away in Darwin and Durban and Des Moines, who’ve never heard that they need to read Lester Bangs and William Blake and Frank O’Hara and Jack Kerouac til I told ‘em so.. but for the rest of yez, I’ll cut to the chase…) it’s been a pip, and now here’s the finish, with which I’m sure yez can all agree…
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
‘Elitiest’, is that like, even more elitist than elitier?
—
The “bitchiest” “bitches” in this purple wonderland were always the blokes. Always.
Typical of the misogyny that ruined so many threads, OTB ascribes a female epithet to boorish behaviour by blokes.
Perhaps some of the trolls can enlighten us: whose punch-bowl will you now deposit your turds in? And in which sandpit will you pee?
Enquiring minds want to know…how best to avoid you in future.
The truth is out there salon is STILL hilarious after all these years.
FDB @ 250 on that thread: “Aha!
So you admit your face is made of poo!”
Pure. Comedy. Gold.
Boo to trolls! Let the witchcraft begin!
Hi j_p_z
In other news, I’ve written a post:
http://yellowvinyl.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/campbell-newman-and-the-coming-reign-of-abbottism-i/
Actually, this is my last entry to the LP.
but yet
I know
what I’m
talking about.
Oh, this is sad, g’bye LP.
Not to concern troll (much), but yeah, I was sort of wondering for a year or three how the basic dynamics of a blog run by distinct-non-Greens and distinct-Greens would work out. The stoush over the federal Labor leadership sure didn’t help bring any clarity for continuing the format on and on.
It’s a tribute to the Australian Broad Left that you got seven years out of it.
By this you mean the ending of pure amateur blogs and the continuing bollocks of MSM attempts at ‘blogging’, right? Those two things don’t have to comprise all blogging in this country, you know.
I expect the Crikey blogs will get a slight boost out of this. Lot of potential there for an intellectually-inclined thirdway between the two dying/irrelevant sectors, particularly if they decide to give a guernsey to someone like Tim Dunlop, or maybe Quiggin.
At #340, JPZ, that is the classiest way I’ve ever seen someone take time to say goodbye before Pucking off.
Sad news indeed.
Thanks to MarkB, BrianB, Kim, Tigtog, Anna Winter;
Helen, Pavlov’s, Casey, Paul Burns, FDB, GregM, Nabokov, Lefty E, Paul Norton, Katz, Ootz, j_p_z, and many others.
Erudition was always his hallmark, Liam.
And yours.
There’s nothing to compare with a loving Puck.
I’m glad you dropped by, Japerz – I almost always enjoyed your contributions even when I disagreed with you.
I’m going to miss LP – but hope to follow to Facebook and other blogs.
I wanted to let Helen know that the Safari doesn’t want me to visit Cast Iron Balcony at the moment – says it is infected with a virus.
Siobhan, are you going to the old CIB URL? Because we had to move Helen to a new domain because of that malware alert (she has no access to the server itself to fix it).
Try castironbalcony.com
Yo!
I’m Lefty Elitiest,
my heart is da bleediest,
Im rarely defeatiest,
cos my tofu’s da meatiest,
and my suit is da Keati-est
&c.
Au revoir, LPistas! x
LE
Yes! Let me reiterate
I’m at castironbalcony.com
NOT castironbalcony.media2.org
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t seem to have caught up with this.
Oh, and whoever came in using the search string “Paul Mercurio the full Monty” sorry I couldn’t help you, I hope you found what you were looking for!
Goodbye. I used to come here every so often, from the beginning until a couple of years ago. A lot happened in my life over that seven years – married, had a child, lost my wife to cancer, eventually got my life back on track beyond my wildest expectations. My politics were very rarely consonant with the prevailing views here, but I used to drop by to see how the lines were playing and reacting. My favourite was Kim’s some time in the honeymoon of 2008, asking disdainfully if something were false why Julia Gillard would say it. Priceless! Charming, even.
Things continue to improve (from my point of view) – even better now that Bob Brown has resigned! – and I’ll have to get my counterpoints elsewhere. Good luck to all in your future politicking.
How apposite that LP pulls the plug in the same week that Bob Brown does.
I presume it’s a coincidence.
LP will give an appearance of bring alive until the end of this month. The Greens might not last that long.
And with little piece of trolling, I’m signing off.
See yez in the blogosphere.
farewell LP, was nice knowing ya.
That’s a bit of sad news. I enjoyed occasionally dropping in to fight the ALP supporter’s corner (someone had to). But all things must come to an end eventually, I suppose.
I imagine like aging rocks stars LP-ers will stage a comeback tour in twenty or thirty years time, but it will never recapture the old magic.
P.S. Labor is right and the Greens bite the big one.
All the best everyone.
…I meant ageing rock stars – how appropriate, another typo on my last post.
During a particularly stupid period in my life, Mark helped me out. I doubt he’ll have any idea what i’m talking about
Regardless, I’m grateful
Paul, so have I. At my local pub, the Mansfield in Townsville. But not in 2003.
I am sorry that you didn’t spend the rest of the night with him for I am sure that you would have found it a beautiful and memorable experience for you.
I am sure too that you would have moved on, soon enough, from your discussions on postmodernist hegemony in the contemporary Left.
A night to remember, (though not entirely in the Titanic sense).
Then together, under Jack’sguidance, you could have changed the world, if not necessarily in a good way.
As Casey has said to me:
Oh, les temps perdu.
Next time carpe diem. (or nocte)
Oh dear – having finished at school I hadn’t really had much time to keep up with what was going on with LP, and I find that it’s closing down!
Best wishes to everyone – and a special thanks to Brian for a bunch of interesting links in his CC threads. Will look forward to seeing more of them somewhere else(?).
Maybe, just maybe, Jess. If I do continue somewhere else I plan to email everyone who expressed an interest on this thread.
I appreciated your contributions.
Brian @363 I have been especially appreciative of your posts, without detracting from others of course.
Please place me on you “list”. Thanks
All the best everyone. I think in its small way LP contributed something to progressive politics.
Mods –
Many thanks for creating the best Australian Political Blog in existence. I had a ball here and will miss everybody.
Twitter ? Twitter is to debate and analysis what interjections are to conversation. Nah, LP and Blogs like it are sorely needed.
And in closing I would just like to say I was correct about everything. See youse all ’round the traps.
- Giles / Baraholka
Thanks all. Sad goodbyes.
It’s good to know that even though I’m now on NZ time, and online at 4.54am AEST, I still wouldn’t have made it to frist on Saturday Salon if there was one. At least I have been consistent. The hole that LP is leaving is going to take some filling you lot. Dammit.
And we will have to stop being Lazy on Sundays, too
Ootz, old bean
i know its closing (there’s a sign on the door & the saturday lounge is boarded up) but i’m going to be here at this pub, propping up the bar from my high chair, til the last drop of blackberry nip.
alfred venison
Brian, please add me to that list, thanks, Dylan.
As a matter of interest is there a comment in the bin or did I lose the comment?
Forget the last comment.
PART THE FIRST
Well since we are disclosing, it behooves me to admit also that I have in fact met Devil Drink. Consider yourselves lucky that the veils of the internet separate you from him. Finding him was arduous. Going up that those city streets on a Thursday night late shopping was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted upon the earth and the big trees were kings.
Oh. When I finally came upon him, it was lucky I was a witch and my powers were at their height. His soul was mad, you see. Being alone in that pub, it had looked within itself, and by heavens! It had gone mad. Seriously, his was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. I was beside myself. He looked at you with a vengeful aspect. So I drew a circle of salt around my person. You had to hand it to him. He was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, if not a little highly strung. And I thought to myself in a deeply original moment: You could see that all of Europe had contributed to the making of Devil Drink. He was kind of luminous. Terrifying. Yet, witty, charming and urbane too. He held a drink, drank it, drank some more, offered it round. You could say he was rather obsessed with it. Quite frankly, I topped up the salt. He had the power to charm or to frighten. He was extremely entertaining. Likeable. In short: he was extremely dangerous. He was someone you would vote for. I asked the barman for some more salt.
You are probably wondering what we spoke of in the misty vales. Well, I said: It’s really you isn’t it? You were there when Ariel, or Uriel, can’t remember, tilted the axis on its side and created the seasons. You were the first person to say “Winter is coming” weren’t you? You were there when the rose wilted in Adam’s hand, when the petals curled up, when the pretty little dear who used to lie down with the lion got up and split. What do you have to say for yourself. All the trouble?
TO BE CONTINUED …..
I found it, thank the Devil Drink.
Well get rid of one of em Anna.
please!
PART THE SECOND.
He looked out past me with fiery longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. Really, he made Fyodor look innocent. He made no answer. In this he is just like his maker. Why the frack do they not answer? I poured some more salt.
Oh. His stare. It was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He summed up. He judged. Finally he said:
The horror!
Apparently he had run out of ale and was getting cranky. This was the meaning of “The Horror”. I made my excuses and left. I myself was running out of salt. I could ask no more. As it was, I had peeped out over the edge of myself and it had changed me. My temperature was seldom normal after that. As if I wasn’t weird enough already.
Well I never did get to find out if he was President of the AHA or not, though that would not surprise me at all. He was, in short, remarkable. Somehow I lived through is extremeties. The moral of the story is, go to blog meetups. You never know who you are going to meet.
excuse me while completely fuck up this strand some more and ask that you remove the first version. Many thanks. I hope you appreciate this ode to you DD.
Done now, Casey!
True. You want to go where everybody knows your name.
I’d be very interested in anything you’re doing as well, Brian – your Climate Clippings (and various other bits and pieces) have been an inspiration.
Me too, please, Brian!
You thought it was like Cheers? You are fracking kidding me.
When I first walked into the doors, this is the first thing I saw you doing.
Sure, it was compelling, but lets not be delusional Devil Drink.
Compelling? Perhaps this was more like what you recall?
Oh LOL. Who are you, Samantha Brick now?
No no, it was more like this
This blog lost is nerve Aug 2010 and never recovered. Since then it has lost all value. Go, the mess is ended!
Up to now i have been using LP as my main location for guest posts and comments and using my Pragmantus J bloga for things I have posted elsewhere and a reference site to provide details for some of my comments here and elsewhere. May put more effort into this blog or find a more public home somewhere else.
Thanks LPer’s
A great purple page to have followed for at least part of those seven years
Cheers to all
Me , included, Brian.
And well done to you, and particularly tigtog, for keeping things alive as other team members, understandably, lost interest after such a long haul.
I will really miss this place, with it’s huge cast of interesting contributors, and cannot agree with Mark that “There’s no longer the same need for a hub for political discussion”.
A hub star will be needed more than ever. Dark noalition forces are circling to destroy the most basic of progressive gains and we will need to discuss and respond to matters in greater depth, as a critical election draws near, than twittering ever allows.
See ya and thanks, everyone.
Brian, please count me in as well. Thank you.
Will do, Eric, joe2, Fiona, David et al. Not sure yet what I’ll do. Felt quite sad this morning.
You’re not alone in feeling sad, Brian.
Thanks for your efforts.
One of the many things that LP can be proud for is that it has been the brewing vessel for the development of a rich commenting culture. At the beginning commenting had a fairly formal format. At LP over the years the need for enhanced expression has led to a large variety of comment techniques including layout, grammar, punctuation, html embedding, prose, comedy, identity generation, and more that I cannot think of right now. This culture has spread and can be mapped beyond LP by site, comment and time. There are places where the depth of commenting culture has yet to penetrate, places usually dominated by nastey attitudes, rigid ideologies and really bad language.
LP, under the care of its moderators, has so many positive outcomes for which to be truly proud.
Cheer up, Brian.
I bring to you the future of the Left.
Bilb: You are right about the benefits of moderation. The are too many sites where comments become slinging matches or, for example, posts on climate action get overwhelmed by off topic arguments re the science or left/right cheer squads.
Spot on BilB, it was one of the reasons that attracted me to the purple banner and got me ‘hooked’. We were a bunch of creative individuals with a level of wit, analysis and debating skills way beyond the average flying monkey and their Zoo keeper assistant’s comprehension. Just this morning I have been donning biohazzard gear, to confirm some story (Mega respond) over on the Haters Sun, where upon this update is stuck on.
“Michael Connor farewells the Larvatus Prodeo blog with a few more examples from it of the Left’s debating skills.”
I’ll take the liberty to retrieve below some of our offerings in calling bad science from Mr Conner’s Culture Mulcher compost heap:
Michael Connor may have a point, Mr “anonymous” DI(nr), as I have not observed any Howler Monkeys flinging their scats about yet. However, I doubt Mr Connor has ever been near a distinguished science department long enough, because he would have copped the same informal responses in regards to the quality of dissent offered by the good Professors above, if not blunter ones.
Call us elitist then, if that is the populist label of choice for LP. I’ll wear that badge with pride, when calling the bluff on the foundations of the conservative populist warriors arguments and the associated ‘noise’ by hordes of ‘footy politic’ hooligans. Hooting and hollering on the grassy knoll maybe entertaining and improve moral, if you are that way inclined, yet has not improved a game yet. Even though we may have lapsed at times in frustration, improving the game is what we were about and always will be about!
So cheer up Brian, particularly in the Climate ‘debate’ you were ‘the brain’ as jumpy puts it. You provided a guide and standard for us all, with the depth of your integrity and sharpness of analysis. Respect, these are uncommon qualities nowadays in the wider public discourse. They served this blog and us well in the past and will not go astray in future in another place and form. I would welcome that and look forward to an email from you. Thank you.
Add me, Brian!
If Quadrant were even half serious they would apply the blowtorch to their own side. Go and post something vaguely left-wing on Catallaxy and see how badly you get abused by the knuckle draggers over there.
Yet more rank hypocrisy of the Right.
I’m flattered to have got a mention in Quadrant – my life is now complete. Thanks for drawing it to my attention, Ootz.
Put me on the list as well, Brian. Your posts are among many things I will miss from LP.
Damn DI(NR), Ootz … no mention for me? Was I too polite?
Brian, I would like to be on that list too.
+1 please Brian – you are a legend.
And pretty obviously a great dad as well.
Brian = elder statesman of LP xx
+ 1 to me as well Brian … don’t be a stranger now …
y’all come back now … y’ hear? {/beverlyhillbillies}
Brian, please me too on the climate mailing list.
I see the little boys at Quadrant are still telling their ghost-stories to each other. Those pissants have no idea what it is like to face persecution, and their narcissistic delusions that they are courageous ‘dissidents’ operating under an oppressive regime are an insult to the courage and dignity of my grandparents and great-grandparents, who experienced first-hand what real political and religious persecution are, who faced actual imminent deadly threat, and whose boots those grubs at Quadrant aren’t fit to be kicked up the arse by.
And I’m an elitist all the way, in all endeavours. We only pass this way once. Whether as a spectator or a participant, I prefer to engage with well-wrought, sincere, diligent, high-quality performance, in any field — in science, in surfing, in business, in politics, in baking, in writing, in triathlons, in agriculture, in children’s party entertainers, in sports, in teaching, in medicine, in art, in academia, in pickling, in rhetoric, in software, in cinema, in music, in gardening, in TV, in books, in pizza-making and in lovemaking.
So, if there are people out there who prefer things to be shit, then they can revel in their non-elitist credentials.
This blog was a sanctuary of sorts. Though I was shy, I dared to mingle. Thanks and best wishes to all, sincerely, Shingle.
Just so Mercurius — and FTR, there’s no conflict at all between believing in equity, and favouring egalitarian distribution and favouring a world in which the best of everything is contrived and made available.
It’s pure cant to pretend that we should embrace misery as a virtue merely because there’s a lot more of it about than genuine autonomy and insight and social inclusion. This bizarre conflation is doubly hypocritical when it is proposed by those who privately would ensure that neither they nor their offspring were touched by it — that this is something only those who favour equity should embrace.
We left|sts believe in excellence. We just think everyone should have the chance to be part of creating it and enjoying its bounty. The right is horrified that plebeians should be offered this vision and swear by all that is holy that misery is freedom and that those who tell them otherwise are sneering at them.
Orwell might not have been considering the Quadrant crowd when he composed his most famous work, but it fits all the same.
Fran, it might be you were ignored coz those dumb pricks at Quadrant couldn’t understand WTF you were on about (unlike us lefty elitist chardonnay-chuggers, who usually got it). Or maybe you’re a bit … discursive … to be included in a snappy roundup of lefty elitist latte-slurping disdain for the wretched of the earth. (No criticism from me intended, btw – I’ve always enjoyed your contributions to the national conversation.)
Yes, duly noted, everyone. The pressure is mounting, but maybe, like an ageing footballer I should quit while I’m in front! We’ll see.
I suppose y’all noted that the Quadrant link was March 2010. One of the people mentioned hasn’t been seen much around here lately, but was quick off the mark about how we’d gone wrong. Twaddle, I reckon!
sublimecowgirl and FDB, you embarrass me! Here’s a story I might have told before.
When Mark was born fathers weren’t allowed in the hospital room. I first saw him half an hour later. From the outset he had the nurses buzzing around him, saying, this one’s different!
BTW he’s called me “Brian” since he was four. Just decided one day he was too old for this “Dad” stuff. I couldn’t see why not, so that’s the way it’s been and his sister followed suit.
I didn’t mean anything in particular Brian, about your parenting. How presumptuous that would be.
On the contrary, really. A generally loose-rein approach, praps with suggested reading material, is the impression I get.
But again, I probably presume too much.
Cher Alfred, mon copain sur la vigne de mûre.
I have put my name down as a tutor in the Broadband for Seniors program. That is going to be my new local for awhile. Where as for the big picture, I am heading for a week in the bush, to recharge the batteries, clear the synapses and refocus. Nothing like a timeless landscape with no distractions, the voices of an ancient river, the warmth of a campfire and Amanogawa on a clear night sky to ponder the past and the future.
I am in a bit of a fix about reading matters. It is going to be a one book trip and the choices are The Road Less Travelled by MS Peck, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth by MK Gandhi or The Sixth Day by Primo Levi. All books which are on my reread shelf – which one to pack? Tempting, there is also the dog eared Die Abenteuer des Huckleberry Finn, with Huck sporting a cheeky Berliner accent, a hoot from memory. On the other hand, I already decamp with a Jim and Tom alike.
à bientôt Ootz
Brian @411
“Yes, duly noted, everyone. The pressure is mounting, but maybe, like an ageing footballer I should quit while I’m in front!”
Nah Brian, not the right answer. If you want a break, commit with “terms and conditions” that will allow you to escape after a certain time, but not just yet.
The Quadrant stuff was pathetic drivel, and said more about the author(s) than the subject.
I always thoughtit was a badge of pride on the left to be slammed by Qudrunt. Sort of reassured you you were on track, so to speak.
Can’t remember, Mercurius and DI(NR) – is Quadrant still supported by the Australia Council?
The Australia Council website still lists Quadrant as a publication that receives grant support, at least up until 2010. Hard to tell what the current-year information might be. In their notice of mourning for the death of P.P. McGuinness, the Australia Council website carries a statement that “Quadrant has been supported by the Australia Council for more than 30 years.” (emph. added).
Hmmm. That would make them (Quadrant) “moochers” and “tax-eaters”, wouldn’t it? Or, if I were a Daily Telegraph online contributor, I could carelessly hurl around epithets like “hypocrisy” and “rorting” and “corruption” and still be published by the News Ltd mods.
Or do grants only transform into mooching and tax-eating and hypocrisy and rorting and corruption when received by teh Left?
No need to answer that.
Mercurius – what a bunch of hypocrites they are.
Paul, absolutely! It was a lazy slam too, just a short para & quotes and that’s it. Not really earning the Australia Council money are they?!
FDB, no probs. On the reading, Mark was a prodigious reader from the outset and really needed no encouragement. Granted, of course, that we were a reading household and read quality books to the kids practically from the cradle.
Brian @ 411 – aging footballers shouldn’t quit while they are on top of their game.
Anyway i’d like my email added to any potential list if you are inclined to trundle round the paddock for a few more games or even a few more seasons.
Count me in too, Brian.
Hardly needs saying Brian – but include me in!
Me too please Brian!
I rarely contributed to those threads, but appreciated them greatly all the same.
Brian, you could always do a Wayne Bennett (a smiling version)
.
BTW. I do realise the date of the q-rant, however the link to it was A. Bolt’s parting shot to us on his recent “Mega respond” post. Not that that bothers me either. Me thinks we should take aim at further up the food chain, if we are serious about a shift towards sustainability. I agree with JohnD @396
and have been reflecting on my own contributions in that regard.
Time for renewal.
PS. Has anyone else noticed the corporate Rio Tinto ad, with the usual imagery of big holes in the ground and heavy machinery, in the commercial break just after they blasted the tree of live in the Avatar movie on channel 10 last night. Reality is indeed stranger than fiction.
Oh, this makes me sad, even though I haven’t been part of the conversation on LP since – well, for a very long time. Since before Troppo finished even I think. Thanks to all who’ve posted here over the years, and best wishes. I’ll be interested to see where you all end up next…
Brian, count me in too.
Ootz: The Levi is a must read, but you might end up looking more inwards than outwards.
LPers: Thanks for the humour, pathos, wisdom, role-plays, perspectives, challenges. It felt like family (without the Christmas fondles from uncle Henry). Will miss the pub brawls. Where has SATP gone? Will miss the pub crawls.
Mark: Special thanks. I wonder if you see how unique LP has become, ‘coz I can’t see how a 140 character or “like” culture can offer the space for proper discourse.
Brian: More pressure! Add me to the list please.
Love youse all (well… nearly),
davidh
Brian, please add me to the list too.
Your climate clippings are excellent. So good in fact they are worth wikifying, as I have done for some already. Let me know if you would like some assistance with publishing them, or you could put them on a read only blog, if you don’t already.
May I go on that list too please Brian
Brian that list keeps swelling… nice to be wanted and needed!
Bye bye (sob) Larvatus Prodeo! It was such fun tuning into the blog during the demise of the Howard Years. Hopefully you will all reincarnate into another stranger and richer form when the dreaded Rabbit arrives, to impart comfort, witticisms and intelligent debate in the coming dark and dismal political clime…
LP goes yet Shorten is still a tosser:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/extra-50-in-dole-will-cost-117m/story-e6frea6u-1226328207146
In the absence of the great master here is a topup to hold the CC addicts from going totally stir crazy
http://www.alternet.org/environment/154936/6_scary_extreme_energy_sources_being_tapped_to_fuel_the_post_peak_oil_economy
and, there is hope for the future
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9074
Brian, you can add me to the list as well, thanks.
One of the first blogs I commented on…thnx for the opportunity.
All the best.
N’
Me too, Brian.
That Oil Drum post is fascinating, CCiE.
LP has had the death rattles for quite a while. Obviously Mark Bahnisch has been excessively embarrassed by the standard of comments for what was supposed to be a quality blog. Sorry to spoil the party.
This blog enabled me to reconsider political issues from first principles and re-engage with people and ideas. My own blog would never have taken off without LP, but mind you I haven’t been here in a while and it bears out what Mark said at the top: if you’re grateful to people for doing so much work for so little consideration you can’t complain when they set their burden down. What you should do is to say thank you, and see you around.
don c, the only embarrassment with comments like that is to yourself.
su and others, duly noted.
Dawkins v Pell
Made me believe… in hell
That’s itski, later muchachos/as!
Brian, put me down for the list too please.
Don coyote you managed to highlight one of the great features of LP, their tolerance of fools.
Some potted thoughts on LP and the Australian blogosphere here.
Moi aussi, Brian.
Et moi s’il vous plait, Brian.
( What – do we have to write in French now? Merde.)
Huggy
Auf Deutsch bitte!
I don’t understand French, but I take your meaning!
The ever-reliable xkcd provides some context for folding the tent…
http://www.xkcd.com/1043/
The Carbon Price will change the definition of human progress, will it not?!!?
~8^o’////,<
Perhaps Keithy, but don’t you think it’s time “progress” was fundamentally re-assessed?
ideally it should, Keithy, and in the process stimulate a fundamental reassessment of the definition of human progress.
a.v.
Thanks Mark, Brian, Kim et al.
It was great.
Seems the Abbott opposition is true to itself to the last. Now it intends to cut or wipe out pensions and benefits. Where now will we bemoan such bastardry that LP is gone? And don’t tell me Facebook and Twitter. As others have pointed out, they’re not up to the job.
And according to the SMH poll 50% support the idea, 6% undecided.
So essentially the majority of Australians agree with Abbott and Hockey.
Of course we can all assume that this is only about welfare and handouts to bludgers (the unemployed, the vunerable, the sick and the elderly) and not the people who deserve welfare like the middle class (Tony Abbott’s promise of parenting payments I assume will exclude single mothers) and the struggling sectors of business like mining companies and clubs.
God help us all when Abbott gets in.
(Disclaimer, I am biased towards social welfare programs both as an ex-Catholic and as a former welfare recipient so take my views with a pinch of salt.)
The assumption is the Libs will go after the poor on welfare however I think it more likely they’ll go after the middle-class welfare stuff. Plenty of money to be saved there without risking looking like complete arseholes by going after the unemployed & disability pensioners (lets not pretend any of this would be directed at aged pensioners).
Could I suggest a last word thread – a chance for the people who post here to give their final word on whatever.
Suggestions:
Nominate the most significant thread
Who had the best ideas? (Poster or author)
Most admired poster
The best post (who, when and where)
Contributor they pay tribute to, and why
Would you take a post back? Which one and why (time for regrets)
I will miss LP, and this is just an idea – but one I think would send LP out with a bang. Since my creativity is limited, what other questions should apply to the thread? Respondents can reply to one or many questions.
tssk,
http://www.news.com.au/national/john-howard-went-to-far-with-welfare-payments-admits-shadow-treasurer-joe-hockey/story-e6frfkvr-1226333000084#ixzz1sRmgCIhx
Thanks Jacques….that’s a hell of a lot different than the picture I got from other sources.
Talking about middle class welfare he’s bang on the money.
I propose that the final commetnon April 30 be:
FRIST!
@ 450 and 451, yes: the carbon price will rewrite the whole shebang.
Markets are an organic and totally natural concept. Regulated-markets however are where the power comes in….
Like fish we need structure!!
BTW, it’s the Buddhists who say that words don’t contain the truth!
But, OK, I take your furthering of the point: and looky looky at what Joe Hockey has just said—>> the world is turning folks… what is unsustainable is unsustainable. Nothing grows exponentially.
Hey, my new favourite saying may become: GREED IS A PRETENDER!
…Hmmmn, sounds good!!!
North Coast Voices has some of the more important quotes from Hockey’s speech and by following the links you can get to the speech itself.
He’s really saying that we can’t have higher entitlements with lower taxes, that you shouldn’t borrow to provide welfare or ongoing services and you shouldn’t borrow to pay the interest on borrowings.
Pretty banal so far, but his approach to government assistance of individuals is minimalist and suggests we need to take community responsibility like the Asians rather than rely on governments.
NCV has helpfully illustrated what Uncle Joe’s Asian vision might look like.
Not 100% sure Brian, but I think the first photo on that blog might be of an elderly gentleman digging a grave for the dead baby behind and to the right of him. Just a warning for anyone clicking on the link.
Perhaps the Singapore system is what Joe has in mind.
Not a welfare system Australia should aspire to. (Singapore has one of the highest per capita GDP in the world.)
Whenever I come on here to read the posts and comments, I alway’s feel that I’m surrounded by people who are smarter than me, but in a good way. Thoughtful, respectful, intelligent writing (for the most part)
I know I’ll find you guys on other sites, but I want you all to know how much I have appreciated your intellectual stimulation.
Well, Richard, there are a lot of people here smarter than me too.
More than that, I think what LP did was to build a virtual community. I know that many don’t read the comments threads, but often the comments threads worked quite well. For example, the thread on Paul Norton’s post on the planet under pressure consisted of a conversation from which just about anyone could learn a bit, and some of us more than a little.
Where I’m at at the moment is that I’ve had a couple of approaches which present opportunities and given the comments on this thread I’d like to do something. Right now I’m not doing anything other than thinking. I’ve got to attend to some private matters before I devote time to new blogging ventures.
However, I’d be thinking of a focus on climate, but not limited to that. One thing is for sure, it won’t be anything like LP at it’s prime. I don’t think there will be a high volume of posting, but I’m hoping there will be consistency and at least one general open thread each week, so that commenters can pick up events that arise and continue the conversation if that’s what they want to do.
Hi, Brian.
Please put me on the e-mail list to let me know when your new blog begins.
Has anybody thought of the possibility that Hockey might be putting his hand up for Abbott’s job with his new “Let ‘em die starving and homeless” welfare policy?
Michael Pascoe in “The ge” online agrees with you, Paul:
Is Joe Hockey starting his run for the Liberal Party leadership and, therefore, the Lodge? Or maybe the run just became more obvious as he goes where Tony Abbott hasn’t: into the realm of Liberal economic responsibility.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/run-joe-run-20120420-1xau4.html#ixzz1sYMNDNfU
But he thinks Joe’s words signify “economic responsibility” (which I don’t).
“The Age”
So, ECONOMIC RESPONSIBILITY BEGINS by TRASHING THE HOWARD-COSTELLO-ERA NOW!??!
QUE???????????????
(…Has Hockey cleared this with the MSM ??????????)
NO ENTITLEMENT TO GOVERN!
Brian @446
If your new project includes innovative directions in energy production, storage and usage, their applications to the regular Joe/anne, then I would be honoured to receive an invite to learn from a source like that run by your good self.
HaHa, In moderation to the end. I’m feeling guilty that the commentor that you defended, that later went on to offend “royally (?)” may have been me.
If it was me, i apologise to you. But not the clown that quoted me out of context and belittled me without sanction.
In the meantime Tony has outlined a plan
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the state and territory leaders reached a similar agreement last week, but Mr Abbott says his proposal goes further and that it could also apply to local councils.
Mr Abbott described himself as a conservationist but says the current environmental approvals process is too complex.
He wants to give state and territory governments sole responsibility for approving major projects and maintains it would not reduce environmental protections because they would enforce the existing laws.
Then he for state and territory governments to act as one-stop shops to fast-track environmental approvals for developments. Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the state and territory leaders reached a similar agreement last week, but Mr Abbott says his proposal goes further and that it could also apply to local councils. Mr Abbott described himself as a conservationist but says the current environmental approvals process is too complex. He wants to give state and territory governments sole responsibility for approving major projects and maintains it would not reduce environmental protections because they would enforce the existing laws. “The standards aren’t the problem. It’s the indecision, the imprecision,” he said. The Coalition would also introduce deadlines for decision making and penalties if they are not met. Mr Abbott argues states that sign up to the agreement will attract more investment, making them more competitive.”>said in Brisbane that
“The standards aren’t the problem. It’s the indecision, the imprecision,” he said.
The Coalition would also introduce deadlines for decision making and penalties if they are not met.
Mr Abbott argues states that sign up to the agreement will attract more investment, making them more competitive.
In addition Tony has promised pledged to get rid of carbon pricing within just six months of the Coalition winning government.
The Opposition Leader said that if blocked in the Senate he would immediately call another election, a double dissolution, and invite the ALP to commit “suicide twice”.
“I won’t reduce the tax, change the tax, or redesign the tax. I will repeal the tax,” Mr Abbott said in Brisbane today.
Mr Abbott ramped up his intentions to scrap the entire scheme if elected, and assured voters they would not miss out on pension increases and tax cuts to be funded by the scheme’s revenue.
Paul B, will do.
jumpy, see you there. As to the past, I couldn’t possibly comment, except that my advice to you, had I given it, would have been to stay away from certain topics!
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/speaker-accused-of-sexual-harrassment/story-e6frea8c-1226334810136
What a surprise Job Search Providers still cooking the books:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/agencies-rorting-jobfinder-fees-toplevel-audit-finds-20120420-1xcp9.html
Yeah wouldn’t want to name them or anything, I remember the Salvation Army getting busted in 2006 for claiming (it’s not called stealing when companies do it) around $9 million in bogus fees.
One of the worst things Howard ever did (and there were many) was privatising the unemployed.
Thanks, Brian.
I usually refrain from commenting on environmental issues as it just tips me into despair. But this latest smoke and mirrors job by Abbott is just too much. Spose I should buy shares in Barrier Reef Mining or whatever right away. Environmental decisions reverting to state and local government? Welcome to the big developers’ paradise. WTF?
The comments were often part of why I visit.
As much as learning anything, being pointed in the direction of interesting stuff, cracking a smile or having a laugh (with and at others, likely reciprocated). Many comments and links here provided me more of a sense that contemporary Australia is more broadly not bereft of ideas, knowledge and wit.
Some issues being ‘debated’ to a tiresome and seemingly pointless standstill, at least until actual events takeover, seems a terminal aspect of human existence. Particularly online.
I’m interested in following any CC posts too Brian.
John D, when I heard Abbott say he was a conservationist last night, I snorted red wine out of my nose.
Funny thing: The Sat Courier Mail devoted most of the front page to the Slipper issue (Plus two other pages) and finally got to the revolutionary old age policy on page 6. Even then the headline was all about means testing.
I’m already tired of hearing this new “green tape” term.
These are in the main long fought for restrictions which prevent developers doing appalling, ugly, and/or damaging shit to our urban and rural environments.
Im all for reviewing genuine bureaucratic crap on a case-by-case basis, but there’s nothing self-evidently good “good” about cutting such restrictions.
DI(nr), Blood Oaf IS a CONservationist. You just forgot to put the kerrect emPHAYsis on the RIGHT sylLAYBle.
Love you all, including those with whom I have for the most part silently disagreed. It’s been a great journey, and all I can say as the rollercoaster comes to rest is, Thank you for one helluva ride.
It is no good being silent when you disagree with me, Fiona. How wlwse will you develop if we do not communicate?
BilB, the slipper is on the other foot. Moi is already fully developed, indeed, utterly evolved …
Many a Slipper
‘Twixt the Cup and the Lip
Snigger
Slipper has stepped aside. I hope this doesn’t mean what I think it does.
Thanks so much, LP.
I never commented, but read religiously. Particularly during a year spent living abroad, this place was my go-to for finding out what was going on in Australian politics. I am ashamed to say that upon hearing word of Abbott taking the Opposition leadership, I hurried out of a nightclub to go read LP.
Ohh Sh*t, I think it does. Why did she burn Wilkie? He’s not an absolute, but he’s certainly more unfriendly than he was.
My understanding was that Oakenshott and Windsor would not support the Wilkie pokies plan. Wilkie in turn won’t support the weakened version.
The NSW Labor Right were the ones behind the pokie reform backflip/knifing Wilkie.
Oh Mark just when ditch the rich was gaining traction & the anne sacks turkey to boot err slipper… best of luck
At the end I have finally looked up the the “meaning” of Larvatus Prodeo. And there is conflict of thought there.
So,….Mark…., in that language is influenced by the user, what was your intention in the use of the term…….Larvatus Prodeo?
Strange that Slipper’s accuser is a ex-National Party staffer . Or am I the only one who smells dirty politics here?
(Well, I ain’t, cause trudge thinks the same as me. This is more set-up than sleaze.) Just sayin’.
Mind you, he was a silly bastard for not keeping his libido under control. But he isn’t Robinson Crusoe there.
James Ashby is a rather poisonous chap.
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/national/james-ashbys-abuse-conviction-for-making-threatening-phonecalls/story-e6frg15u-1226335470602
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-19/strawberry-farm-foils-poisoning-attempt/2720962
Personally I don’t appreciate digging up dirt on alleged victims of sexual harassment especially for political point scoring. The possibility this Ashby guy could be a dickhead is irrelevant.
Leaving aside the civil sex harassment claims – the “blank cab charge” claims may make sense of Slipper’s odd taxi “expenditure” – where he appeared to zip around King’s Cross to the tune of $300 for dozens of weird random trips on a single night. If he had handed over dozens of blank cab charges to a cabbie, signed, that would explain those. It does seem plausible. Except – what would he be getting from a cabbie in return? Looking forward to seeing that cleared up!
It’s all Abbott’s fault
The Battery Bottleneck will symbolise the 21st C’s first hurdle and explains The Liberal Partys sudden embrace of the word,“UNSUSTAINABLE”!
its so sad. here’s bob brown on his q&a victory lap & they’re talking about friggin’ slipper.
a.v.
ok back on track now.
It’s just Un-Australian …
it looks like there’s no book on the historic south brisbane by-election this saturday…
I can get onto whether Craig Tomson will be an MP when the PM calls an election ( or a Labor MP, two very different prices),
I can get onto how many elected Greens there’ll be,
I can even get 501 to 1 on Albo leading the party into the next election,
but I can’t bet against the brisbane times confident assertion that
Labor will retain Bligh’s seat….
After last night’s “Meet the Candidates” forum at the Boundary, the woeful performances of the “two party preferred” pre-selected cutouts, I wouldn’t be so sure the green roughie won’t edge up to second, behind the tory, who will still have to go to preferences…..
and then we’ll see the result of actual labor voters adherence, or not, to trad’s stringent party-line instruction to “just vote 1 me” … the bruvvas, and sisstas, not preferencing the green plague will thus usher in a singularly non-sparkling tory candidate as the unlikely holder of the prize that once was the jewel in the peel street crown.
As they say in the classics The citizens stood round them weeping…. much, not.
Sure, two fixes are in, one with campbells woofle dust, the other the traditional warner push, but they could cancel each other out….
How about it Mark….. you got a fiver that says….?
Danny @ 503
“…the historic south brisbane by-election this Saturday…”
Historic? I would not have said that. Inconsequential more like it ?
Interesting to some degree because at least there are a number of options for the voters, maybe even too many.
More interesting might be any State trends in the local government elections held concurrently with Ms Blighs seat.
Hopefully LP will add a few more days for some post-poll discussion before the doors close.
GH@504:
Agreed, dull as dishwater…Historic only in the sense of the turning over a 20 year epoch….possibly, shudder, only to lurch to another similarly drawn out sentence for the citizenry.
There’s no doubt about the funerality, recent-ALP-regime wise, in the air… about the only place you’ll see or hear South Brisbane referred to as “Bligh’s seat”, (or indeed any mention, and local sightings least of all, of Anna, even in her acolyte’s hustings pitch last night) will be that BrisbaneTimes headline.
Not since Hector’s body was dragged around before the trojan women has there been a stronger stench of mort du roi and the impending destruction of the citadel. ( Craig Thomson standing again would set a new, probably unassailable, benchmark for stenchiness of course, but that ain’t gonna happen)
But you’re right, like all hollow menz, and wimmenz, … the peel street machine will end, not with a bang, but a whimper.
How about Anti-Historic? or anhistoric?
Is Missy Higgins Lebanese?
PN@506:
Yes, that’s what she said last night anyway.
Of course she is, Paul. Higgins is a well known Lebanese surname.
Just came back for a last look… Ah a bit of chat re south Bris by-election… I live in the seat and had 1. Liberal candidate knock on my door last week (first time that’s happened) 2. This week got invited to candidate morning tea (alp… another first), then next day got phoned by a pollster (from Perth of all places). My son was phoned by Labor last night too. We have a council election on the same day which I suspect will cause confusion for some of the less politically engaged.
Congratulations to the NZ Breakers winning the 2012 NBL championship tonight over the Perth Wildcats.
Kristina Keneally spoke well on behalf of BA during the presentation ceremony in Auckland.
Shingle@509:
why polled from perth? Just fill in the dots
“….. has its own call centre facilities in Perth and Auckland with state of the art computer aided telephone interviewing [CATI] systems staffed by a team of over 100 highly trained interviewers. Having our own facility available seven days a week allows us to finalise a questionnaire in the afternoon, put it into field overnight and present top-line results to our client the next morning. ” Back story is pretty good: 70′s computer/numbers geek does his own research, takes it to ALP, his intel is electoral gold compared to what they’d been getting, geek’s company gets contract ever since, bring in the family…
But why bother spending the money in this election, what’s at stake (apart from the cash flow opportunity for the election professionals, and you never let a chance go by for that)?
If the tory gets up, it’s just another tory in a legislature that’s already aflood with them, and really, campbell needs to have to be seen to serve the noisy troublemakers of 4101 like he needs another hole in the head. It’s a good one to lose: better to leave it as labor, flog it with uber-development without one of yours having to wear the electoral approbrium…. maybe that’s why they went with their candidate, it’s as close as they could get to running dead… (you can get an mp3 of the candidates forum from yesterday’s 612 drivetime if you want to hear how he sparkles). Ironically, even so, he was able to pin Anna to within a couple of hundred votes in primaries, talk about toxic.
On the other hand, ATM, Anna-stacia is qlp parl leader with daylight second…. what happens to that setup should Anna and Peel street’s annointed get up like was meant to happen?
Meanwhile, the actual result will swing on if, & who, SB greens voters vote 2 ….
If the tory candidate could have extracted a pledge out of Campbell that made sense to local greens voters, like 11 star sustainable building codes standards mandatory for all SB developments, or providing an opportunity for those burghers who aren’t allowed to get solar panels on their roof (cos the peninsula is chockers already and panel power uploads are disrupting the grid) to locate their panels somewhere else where green electricity is more a value add, or whatever, then watching the cognitive dissonance of the watermelonry struggle with, “hello, my vote could have a real and valuable local environmental effect, but i’d have to vote 2 tory”, would have been interesting ….
What’s that I hear…. remember Koala Road?
the last canadian progressive conservative party held off an apparently wildly popular libertarian leaning upstart & was re-elected for another 4 years in tar sands rich alberta last monday, 23 april. defying the predictions of all professional polls & surveys, east & west, think tank & media, and even the left/progressive bloggers (david climenhaga’s “albertadiary” & “daveberta” [".ca"]). a healthy 57% of alberta voters (up from 48% in 2008) in a first past the post election for 87 seats, returned the progressive conservatives, led by former un human rights lawyer alison redford, stopped the supposedly inevitable takeover of totally inexperienced danielle smith & her teaparty-like wildrose alberta & thus secured the continuation of the red tory stream of canadian conservatism for at least another four years.
in this election stephen harper backed his ideological soul mate smith & wildrose to the pointed point of lending them federal conservative party campaign strategists from his own office of pm&cabinet & refraining from endorsing redford. some partisan cheerleaders promote smith as “the sarah palin of the north” & the outcome of this election is a welcome speed bump in the way of the push to graft american teaparty ideology onto canadian politics, provincial & federal. its a shot across the bow to stephen harper & his amercian brand of conservatism. the harperites saw this election as their opportunity to finally extend their style of quasi american conservative politics to the provincial level and specifically to alberta, which from this year has become the largest component of the canadian gnp, displacing ontario from that position for the first time in canadian history (petro dollars, two speed economy).
besides redford being a red tory throwback, redfern & harper have long ideological animus dating back to the 1990s when harper & his amercian style reform party began their climb to power, destroying the federal progressive conservative party along the way. redford’s father in law at the time lost his federal seat of calgary west to harper in that lurch to an earlier version of the american style of right-wing politics. also, redfern served in the progressive conservative federal governments of joe clake (an alberta boy) & brian mulroney (where she began her work for the un) at the same time harper was gearing up to undermine the federal progressive conservative party from the far right.
the seat count is progressive conservative: 61; wildrose: 17; ndp: 4; liberal: 5. the ndp doubled its seats. towards the end of the campaign there was a popular, for a while, youtube video by young students encouraging young people to (1) vote, and (2) hold their noses & vote pc (IneverThoughtIdVotePC.com). it may have had some effect. its also being said that traditional non-voting conservative pc supporters were motivated enough by the wildrose spectre to get out & vote this time around. turnout was high by alberta standards. a relative of mine who at one time extolled newt gingrich voted liberal & had a liberal party campaign sign on his front lawn. the twitter tag #abvote is still running hot.
in any case, although it does nothing to slow down the development of the tarsands,
it is an upset for professional pollsters & more importantly its a setback for stephen harper’s dirty tricks quest to transform canada into a republican style usa-lite. so, even if the tories are back in saddle yet again after 41 continuous years, i’m kind of happy: its nice to see alison redford’s style of royal canadian conservatism (red tory) is still in the mix.
alfred venison
AV – NFI WTF UR talking about. Please decode so I can understand what seems to be a very interesting overview of a Canadian election event.
hi Geoff Henderson
you’re right it is a lot of the unfamiliar to take in at once. i’ve been on tenterhooks about this election for a month now. everyone expected upstart far right tea party clone wildrose to decimate the centrist progressive conservatives & win a big majority in oil rich alberta (think tar sands, think $2.5 billion surpluses for the next decade). instead of the defeat & decimation expected, the alberta progressive conservatives retained gov’t with a diminished but still comfortable majority. the alberta progressive conservatives, led by united nations friendly lawyer alison redford, and the conservative party of canada, under stephen harper, are not the same party & have no shared institutional history: harper, originally a western canadian soft separatist conservative, gained his present ascendancy over canadian conservatism in the 1990s, over the dead body of the federal progressive conservatives (redford’s party), and is an american style republican conservative – radical right. alison redford, on the other hand, is a more traditional canadian style conservative, known there as a “red tory”.
the term “red tory” has, in recent times, more often than not been a pejorative & everyone until monday had figured redford & the alberta progressive conservative party (the last party organisation anywhere in canada still using that old name) were on the way out after 41 years (!) in power & that voters would stampede to the wildrose libertarian tea party message & harper would get a provincial conservative gov’t of his own ilk at last.
but no, voters didn’t buy it & in fact turned out in record numbers (58% turnout this time compared to 40% in 2008) to vote wildrose down by voting the “red tories” up. again. as well as extreme policies, wildrose has racist & homophobic baggage that the leader danielle smith didn’t disavow (goggle: “wildrose ron leech controversy” & “wildrose allan hunsperger controversy”) and that dragged them down in the campaign’s last week. people also voted strategically: its reckoned many liberal voters, for example, apparently refrained from voting for their party (a lost cause in most ridings) and instead voted pc to exclude wildrose for sure. and many erstwhile (like in 2006) complacent pc voters came out & voted this time, again to ensure wildrose were excluded. many young voters also came out & voted this time, again in order to exclude wildrose. a hell of a lot of motivation took hold, among a lot of different people, in a non-compulsory, first past the post election, leading to an historic result no one predicted. pundits & pollsters are shaking their heads.
this election is significant & is being reported as marking a split in the conservative movement in canada. even though harper’s & redford’s are not the same party, it matters because harper banked so heavily on wildrose’s danielle smith winning. it would have been an extension of his style of conservatism to a provincial gov’t for the first time, and to the province that has just this year become the biggest part of the national gnp.
harper said once (i paraphrase) “when i’m through with canada you won’t recognise it”. this election was a set back for harper’s style of conservatism & his ambition to re-make canada in its image. i’ve read redford’s victory remarks and she seems very much the kind of conservative you’d want to have if, come what may, you were going to have a conservative: a progressive conservative. i’m very happy albertan’s didn’t buy the wildrose teaparty kool aid & thereby sent stephen harper a much overdue message that his style of radical conservatism is not normative & not welcome everywhere.
alfred venison
thanks for the re-write AV, much easier for me. I’d better learn about Canadian politics now to appreciate more about what has happened. Thanks again
good luck geoff, i never thought it could be this interesting again once baleful lord harper became pm with a majority in his own right. but i didn’t count on the ndp performance last year & i certainly didn’t count, six months ago, when alison redford took over, on a flank against harper opening on the centre right as well.
you’ll be ok with canadian politics if you check it oot, here’s the drill: the federal liberals are now being led by an ex-ndp from ontario, and the federal ndp are now being led by an ex-liberal from quebec, and the conservatives are being led by a one time soft sell western secessionist from alberta who speaks poor french, and alberta’s being led by a united nations friendly “red tory” who speaks good french. its interesting times in the old country again.
a.v.
Nice one, your Lordship, taa…you can’t fit that sort of bootstrap exposition in a tweet. Red Tory huh? 41 years?
“a progressive vision, pledging to continue to invest in health care and education”… I’ll drink to that. |_| |_| …
From the sounds of it, there are similarities alberta with queensland: rodeos (out in the mid-west, where men are men, and cattle are nervous) an economy largely based on digging holes in the ground ( 34% government revenue from royalties on non-renewable natural resources),….
Here it’s been coal, and recently, as you would have picked from the time you’ve been frequenting here, coal seam gas as our Studebaker Hoch (fantastic new superhero of the current economic slump…FZ, JABFLA)
Which makes me wonder: unless there’s something very special in the water there, there must be quite a few, maybe a lot, of citizens there a tad uneasy about the CO2 imposte of that sort of political economy, the price the world pays for the Albertan way of life, huddling for warm inner glowth as some variant of a Greens party.
How do they fare electorally? Or do they get hunted as a state sponsored sport?
‘Onya
Here’s hoping the members of the HSU are well served by Bill Shorten’s actions:
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten will seek to have positions at the Health Services Union declared vacant and administrators appointed in a surprise move against the trouble-plagued organisation.
Mr Shorten said he wanted to put the interests of the union’s health workers first.
“They are not being served by the dysfunctional fighting within the HSU East Branch,’’ Mr Shorten said.
Advertisement: Story continues below
“Many [HSU East] members do not earn a lot of money. But they pay their union dues. They do not deserve the bad headlines that have been so associated with the HSU East leadership.
“These are ordinary Australians who have heard some pretty extraordinary allegations against their union leadership.”
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/dysfunctional-minister-seeks-sacking-of-hsu-officials-20120426-1xmqm.html#ixzz1t7PWO3jZ
Too bad, this was a quality group blog. I enjoyed your posts and the stoushes. You drew far more quality commentors than you did nitwits, as is clearly outlined in the comments on this final post. Facebook, seriously? well, o.k., maybe, but I can’t see Twitter offering value. Good luck to all.
Hi all,
if you’ve been hanging out for something climatey, I’m going to live blog on the Minchin vs Rose belief-a-thon, followed by Q&A, which will be on the ABC from 8:30-10:30. The link is here.
There will be more here at Stefan Lewandowsky’s place. Hashtags include #qandascientists and #climatrisk
Thanks for that Roger. It is kind of comforting to know there is an evidence based ‘sanity zone’ available to retreat from the filth merchants propaganda oozing from the public broadcasters smokestack. As well as, it reminded me to subscribe to your blog to stay informed.
I’ll also take the opportunity to thank you for your contribution here on LP, which gave Brian’s CC’s a depth and credibility not easily found outta there in the infosphere on that topic. I found it a privilege to have had direct access to your professional knowledge and informed opinion. Oh, and ditto to Jess!
Fortunately I missed the show, Roger – I would have been throwing things at the TV, having heard Minchin and Rose on the Science Show the other day. Thank you for watching it so the rest of us didn’t need to.
Minchin gets 2 hours on the ABC to peddle his tired and discredited talking points and then lo and behold he’s got a column in the SMH this morning as well.
You wouldn’t mind so much if he didn’t play the victim card with such alacrity.
Danny @ 511 – so you think Campbell doesn’t want South Brisbane … Maybe so. The LNP candidate who arrived on my door step was emphasizing (surprisingly I didn’t set the dog on him) his credentials as a local, as a surveyor with experience building tunnels & infrastructure (Campbell’s fave thing), a dad of 5 including 2 sons adopted from Thailand (so not a racist then, seems to be the reaction of people bearing emotional scars after the Howard years) and he has renovated a Qlder house which is the predominant architecture of our streets. Finally, they are telling people they won’t get a say in govt.I thought the result in primaries was fairly close but as you say green prefs will more likely flow to labor. I just wonder if some will buy the no say in govt line.
Qld is set to become a civil engineers wet dream so we hardly need another one to egg the chief engineer on. (A process engineer would, of course, be a much better choice.) In the mean time it looks like public servants will be sacked to finance the wet dream:
Hard to say which is worse. A so called Labor government that kept so many public servants as casuals and long term contractors and that was less than diligent about paying people on time or what the Newman government looks like doing. Perhaps the best outcome would for the Greens to win South Brisbane and give them all a shock?
Glad you picked up on that John D@525,
campbell / nicholls decimation, with extreme prejudice, of the qld public service. Anybody in an acting role, anybody on a contract, will most likely be quietly shi**ing themselves, that the font of their life circumstances, their school fees, servicing their mortgages, spending on, y’know, stuff and services, is about to disappear on very short notice. Oh yeh, that’s right, everyone can go work for cliveNgina’s holesRus. Hand in your white collar, pick up your yellow shirt, on the way out.
Baillieu plans to cut 10% from his public service, (Vic post-him has grown to highest mainland unemployment, and that’s before recent car industry haemorrages) so Campbell will have to appear to do something more muscular than that benchmark. Much. The Vic “people focussed change management” industry has had to tone it down a bit, or folks’ll remember feeling jeffed and start to arc up. Here there’ll be no such restraint… Borbidge who?.
Qlds excuse for a PSU, the Together Union’s ( don’t laugh, it’s true) Alex “judas” Scott, (seen here supping with the devil at tognini’s before the election) is now crying foul, you said you’d respect me in the morning, that
…
Affected… what’s that an epithet for? Wonder what campbells model (aka his tatty A3 sketchbook) predicts will be the overall economic effect of his surgical ambitions? Don’t you worry about that?.
Crikey John D, you are giving a lot of credence to one newspaper story, and simplifying the antecedents of Queenslands malaise somewhat, and likewise the possible solutions that might be brought to bear to correct the issues.
It’s hardly a simple task at best, the numbers and proposals are not even available yet. It’s not even clear what condition the State finances are in, yet some are carping just because Costello is managing the finance enquiry.
I think that the topic of temp or contract positions vs full time permanent is a serious topic and involves a lot of facets: including the general changes in employee mobility and the concept of “loyalty”, the laws that inhibit both hiring and firing, OHS, equal opportunity and much more. This would be a massive discussion – if anyone knows where it might be held please let me know.
Dear LP Team,
Thanks for your wonderful efforts in publishing this fantastic blog. I wish you all well, and no doubt will be reading your words elsewhere as new ventures are formed. And I do feel sad!
Cheers, Darren Lewin-Hill
Geoff, the problems that I see with Costello running the enquiry is that he’s partisan, and he’s bone idle. The outcomes won’t reflect reality, more than likely.
I salute all the booth workers for all parties and candidates in today’s Queensland local government elections for doing their democratic duty in very trying conditions – certainly in SEQ, where the rain is chundering down. In fact the more elections in which I do booth work for my own party, the more I come to like and respect all the people who do this voluntary work, whether it’s for my own party or for others.
…a little over the top perhaps? You love a good whinge.
May I draw your ettintion to the feats of my discindents today. Puyirro end Etlentic Jool won their Group 1 raciz et Rendwuck, Iffushint was a veluyent sicond un the Sudney Cup, end Zebusco won un Milbourne.
Guys and Gals,
In case I miss the deadline for closure (and who will be last to post?) Thanks for all the thoughtful discussions, much appreciated, much to admire and much learned. LP will be missed.
Whatever the reasons for closing here, it was not the lack of commenters.( I wonder whether Brian will continue to post on climate change somewhere else.) Personally, I have been outran by information technology, in part due to the psychology of inertia and in part due to the psychology of cost. The new gizmos are great, I am told, but the old gizmos are, I believe when informed with imagination, are still great as well.
Even if we don’t read books as we once might have, we still read and write. Our individual and shared responsibility to engage with others as responsible citizens remains regardless of context, or situation, or technical means to the same purpose.
SA Labor government to privatise hospital carparks:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/hospital-carparks-to-be-2m-cash-cow/story-e6frea83-1226341653994
After two elections in Queensland in a month, my knees are hoping that Julia can hold it together Federally for another eighteen months.
Winston@531:
Not as much as I love a good stoush, and this being my last chance..
Didn’t you take Latin at your grammar school?
Decimation = removal of a tenth… you reckon Campbell won’t be going for at least a 10 percent reduction? You’d really be putting the con in conservative then…
Now that you mention it, I used the term for reason beyond it’s strict numerality:
“Because the punishment fell by lot, …..execution, regardless of the individual degree of fault, or rank and distinction.”…well not exactly execution, we haven’t had any fatal bludgeonings, yet, but more reasoned folk will know what I mean. Bring on the barley.
The “extreme prejudice” bit is of course an “apocolypse now” reference, doh, in case you don’t get things like that ( doh, is a simpsons reference, simpsons is a … what cultural literacy 101 depths do I have to plumb ?)
Campbell standing in front of his walk in wardrobe mirror, (lord mayoral ermine and chains, seen hanging up in) in his old engineering corp combat fatigue kit, neatly pressed of course: (apols to Cuppola, F and Milius, J)
As the the substantive: @ scrutineering last night, bringing this up to the labor troops, is Alex Scott reviled or what? Their faces when i showed them the pic of him and Can’t doing tognini’s together, priceless.
Paul: it’s pretty amazing… or appalling how you look at it. The most dramatic change was in Central, where every booth but one had the LNP above 45%. This would never have happened 10 years ago. On the other hand, The Gabba next door had a swing against the LNP, and Helen Abrahams romped it in. Your party came second in at least two electorates, and nearly managed a hat trick with The Gap.
I think many people wanted to kick the ALP again.
god i’m going to miss this place ! i feel decimated.
a.v.
His Lordship @ 539:
Nice bit of fontage you got there
Damn. I’m going to have to select a new home page for my browser.
dear danny
thanks for the up-thumb. many people, generous & otherwise, here & abroad, have, from time to time, mistaken me for alfred “lawn” tennyson, gentleman poet. i am, rather, common alfred venison, poet of titchfield street, a persona of the poet ezra pound & (in character) a staunch social credit man of the 1930s. (google: “alfred venison” & take the jstor link for more). my fontage, as you call it, is hommage to e. e. cummings & a small concession to my tiring aging fingers.
here, for your enjoyment (or not) & in the spirit of lazy sunday, is a little poem by my namesake, alfred venison:-
Song of Six Hundred M.P.’s
We are ‘ere met together
in this momentous hower,
Ter lick th’ bankers’ dirty boots
an’ keep the bank in power.
We are ‘ere met together
ter grind the same old axes
And keep the people in its place
a’ payin’ us the taxes.
We are six hundred beefy men
(but mostly gas and suet)
An’ every year we meet to let
some other feller do it.
I see their ‘igh ‘ats on the seats
an’ them sprawling on the benches
And thinks about a Rowton ‘ouse
and a lot of small street stenches.
“O Britain, muvver of parliaments,
‘ave you seen yer larst sweet litter?
Could yeh swap th’ brains of orl this lot
fer ‘arft a pint o’ bitter?”
“I couldn’t,” she sez, “an’ I aint tried,
They’re me own,” she sez to me,
“as footlin’ a lot as was ever spawned
to defend democracy.”
yours sincerely
alfred venison
yOUR lAWNSHIP it is then…
From the doggerelium, and continue me if you’ve haven’t heard it…
Edward Lear and William Shakespeare are arguing the toss about which of them is the best poet… So they go up to St Peter and ask “Which of us is the best poet?”…
ok, danny, go for it. alfred “lawn” tennyson is courtesy of james joyce, by the way.
a.v.
and St Peter peers at them and says, “Don’t you mean the better poet?”
I’m sorry to see this.
Thanks for your intelligent writing and for offering the space for some clever, and passionate, discussions over the years. Best of luck with your new ventures.
oh, der; ha, ha!
a.v.
Thanks to everyone at LP. I haven’t participated here all that much but I’ve enjoyed reading.
I had become accustomed to spending my morning breaks pondering the conversations on this site from my always changing work-places. It was kinda strange to be reading from the shade of a big, old eucalypt – I inhabit a slow, slow world and the rapidity and the passion of the conversations here sometimes felt overwhelming to me.
I’ve noticed other sites become less diverse in the number of people commenting and they just kinda fade away, so I kinda admire the decision to call it a day.
I’m not on Facebook, twitter, tumblr, nor anywhere really. So I’ll need to find somewhere else to spend my tea-breaks.
All the best to everyone.
PS: Brian, I’d like to be also included on your email list, if that’s ok. cheers.
hi Brian
in case, april 30 means april 30 at 12:01 am, i’ll get in now & ask to be put on your mailing list.
cheers
alfred venison
Me too! Oh, what the heck, why not just keep the site running!
Thanks for all the thought-provoking stuff on LP. More lurking from me than anything else but I always recommended this blog when people were trying to understand what blogging was about. It’s hard to imagine Facebook & Twitter being an adequate replacement.
Respect to Brian and everyone who put in so much time & effort. Good luck with future projects & I’d appreciate being on your email list.
Paul @530: Yes – lousy day to be handing out how to vote cards and yes, it is always comforting to live in a country where booth workers from all parties deal with each other in such a friendly, civilized manner.
Compensation for a day of standing in the wet was the Greens beating Labor in both the ward I voted in and the ward I handed out wet pieces of paper for.
Once again the Brisbane election showed how a clear winner gets more seats than their % of primary vote justifies. (LNP with 69% of the seats from 57% of the primary vote.) Not as bad the state result (LNP with 88% of the seats from less than 50% of the primary vote) but it still results in unnecessary weakening of the non-government vote) It just adds to the case for a serious review of our electoral system.
In the case of council elections there is a good argument for Qld to follow the example of other states by moving to a system based on multi-member electorates and proportional preference voting. (In the case of councils the “government” is determined by the mayoral election and, ideally, the council should be elected in a way that maximizes the chances that the council will function as a “house of review” rather than the Mayor’s rubber stamp.
alfred, Richard, Ann, duly noted.
I do believe things are going to fade black, and I’m assuming midnight tomorrow.
I’ve been working on some private matters. Almost done. On Friday I started work on a new venture and got exactly nowhere. At a rough estimate it’s going to take a month or so.
Thanks for all the intelligent discussion and debate and the thought provoking topics.
For the record…I kinda hoped that all my predictions for the worst would never happen. Kind of like an anti barracking superstition.
Wishing you all the best for the future.
tssk
I haven’t commented here for a quite a while now, but back in the day I used to enjoy dropping by for a bit of argument on the Iraq War, or the treatment of captured Taliban, or the virtues of the free market.
Mark B and the rest of the crew — you folk did a good thing here. This forum had thoughtful posts on interesting topics, and attracted classy people from across the political spectrum. Even the trolls were classy. Mostly. (Though if some of the above comments are any guide, the quality of troll has declined markedly in recent times.)
And some of the comment threads were blisteringly funny. When the like of Fyodor, Nabs, Liam, Casey, JPZ were firing on all cylinders, the result was often wildly entertaining: poetry in motion.
I think the award of Hero of the Internets for best LP commenter must go to Fyodor, who in the monster thread on the Evil Conspiracy surrounding 9/11, displayed a devotion to the cause of truth and rationality that was without peer.
My regards and best wishes to all who sailed on board the good ship Larvatus Prodeo.