Howard Belatedly Complies With Pulat Vanstone Directive

Semi was right. Victory for the Trysting Fields campaign.

Senator Amanda Vanstone says she will take some time to consider her future, after being dropped from the federal frontbench.

Senator Vanstone, who leaves the Immigration portfolio, says she is not sure if she will see out the five remaining years of her parliamentary term.

It's unclear whether the subtext here is that she's contemplating suicide. But if so, Mandy, know that you have my full support. You fat nasty bitch from hell.

(In other news: Is it just me or is Stan Grant looking, weirdly, much much blacker than he used to?)

Comments

[Def]

Where's my promised writing, you lying git?

[teigan]

Hush, you - I have blog-based grandstanding to attend to. And too much email to answer.

But I still love you, honest. Here, have a sidebar link and shut up er, with my sincerest apologies.

[Def]

Tch. I don't care about your damn sidebar links. In fact in some way it's probably a negative reflection on you to even have me there, given the lack of dedication I've shown to the bloody thing.

Your love is also useless to me, unless it comes with gift prizes. Such as writing. I'm waiting.

I will continue to pester.

That is all for now.

[A G]

I dunno. I'll miss mandy and her screwball off the cuff statments.

One of the brightest moments in recent politics was about a year ago when she was just riffing on airline security and talked about how silly it was to keep butter knives and forks aways from people. After all, she said, she often travells with the PM, and could, if she wanted, reach over and stab him in the eye with a pencil. True quote.

She may be evil, but she earned my respect after that one.

[Haydermish]

I'm beginning to think that you don't really have lots of e-mail to answer. Because really, this "lots of e-mail" thing has lasted a year or thereabouts.

Do you really have that much e-mail? And if so, how come!?

[teigan]

AG:
>She may be evil, but she earned my respect after that one.

It would be a substantial exaggeration to say she earned my respect - but I have appreciated her incredible verbal gall at times, in a perverse kind of way. Or at least gained great amusement from it. She was at least 250% more entertaining than, say, the Industrial Relations guy. Andrews? I can never remember.

The most evil politicians are often the funniest. That Josef Stalin, for example; he was a laugh riot.

Hagmish:
>Do you really have that much e-mail?

I went through a phase in the second half of last year when I was basically on top of it - you just didn't notice, because I'd stopped whingeing about it.

Then I went away for three weeks. Silly me.

>And if so, how come!?

I get too much because I write too much. It's a terrible vicious cycle. I don't know what to do about it. It's like a full time job. For which I do not get even the slightest bit paid - inhibiting my ability to hire assistants to help me deal with it. Which is what I really need to do.

[teigan]

That legendary Manstone eyeball-pencil quote in full (from here):

"I recall getting the Prime Minister's attention on this matter once when we were about to spend a large amount of money on security. I asked him, if I was able to get on a plane with an HB pencil - you are able to get on a plane with an HB pencil - and if I came and grabbed him by the front of the head and stabbed the HB pencil into your eyeball and wiggled it around down to your brain area, do you think you'd be focusing?'

"He's thinking, 'She's gone mad again.' But that sort of highlights the point that - to be tactful about these things - a lot of what we do is to make people feel better, as opposed to actually achieving an outcome."

So true. So tactful. So Mandy.

Yeah, in a strange kind of way I suppose I'll miss the vicious horrible cow.

[(Not-so) Mighty Mite]

Pretty sure I'm still owed some email too.

But I'll let you off as it's been more than a year and I never got around to responding to your audio message. (Oops!)

[teigan]

Actually, almost uniquely, I don't think you are. *consults records* Yup, believe I answered your last correspondence on the 26th of December, 2005.

I may be slack.. but I'm not *that* slack..

[teigan]

Do please feel free to answer that audio message, though.

Mmm, audio messages.

[J Carfax]

Yes Stan Grant is looking a lesser shade of pale - I thought it was just my tv reception at first. Probably because SBS don't have the budget for make up artists with the skills to turn everyone into a homogenously Anglo appearance.

Yay for one hour of world news though - it fills a happy medium between no real world news on commercial networks and ad nauseum repeated stories and pointless analysis on BBC World service, which I would refuse to subscribe to anyway...

I say how good it would be to get Al Jazeera in Australia but that would turn your blog into an ASIO target...whoops...

[teigan]

I've reason to suspect that I'm already an ASIO target.

Then again, it might just be he-who-must-not-be-named up to his old tricks again.

[teigan]

>I thought it was just my tv reception at
>first.

So did I. Curious, isn't it? I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

>Probably because SBS don't have the budget
>for make up artists with the skills to turn
>everyone into a homogenously Anglo
>appearance.

Maybe that's it. Maybe it has something to do with his recent extended sojourn in sunny Beijing. Maybe he had a nasty accident with a tanning bed. It's a mystery.

>Yay for one hour of world news though

I don't really believe in news. But as with so many things, I find myself surrounded by people who do and as such feel obligated to play along by watching or reading it occasionally.

Silly news.

[teigan]

>Then again, it might just be he-who-must-not-be-named up
>to his old tricks again.

Speaking of which... actually, no - I think that's a post all of its own.

[w.w]

Stan Grant went to my school, you know. It's almost like I'M a famous television journalist.

That Amandy quote is good. Someone should do her a book like the Rumsfeld one.

... and your 'too much email to answer' gripe is like my 'I can't, I have to go to work' chestnut ...

[teigan]

That Amandy quote is good. Someone should do her a book like the Rumsfeld one.

I'd buy it. If the proceeds went to a worthy cause, like hiring an assassin to kill off the federal front bench one by one in increasingly bizarre, gruesome and perversely symbolic ways. Actually, there's an art project all of its own.