RPG Updates, Social Visits, Invasion Day, Knighting A Prince, Social Events

[tcpip]

Thursday night was the dramatic ending of The Great Pendragon Campaign. The group has played Pendragon for pretty much four years, with The Great Campaign taking over two. Next up Andrew will be running The Laundry Files. Sunday played the fourth session of 7th Sea Freiburg, which involved romance, violence, and demons. I've taken the opportunity to complete notes for the four sessions run so far.

Australia is a country sufficiently broken that we "celebrate" the beginning of the invasion by the British as "Australia Day". Local aboriginal people are unimpressed, and with the resultant health record from dispossession and endemic racism, it's no wonder that the protests will never end. Meanwhile, just to illustrate how much the current government still clings to Mother Britain's apron strings, the Prime Minister has awarded a knighthood to Prince Phillip, a rather vile individual. Even other coalition MPs can't fathom this decision. A positive upshot is the benefits it provides Australian republicanism.

Other social events for the week for caseopaya and I included having Clinton and his partner Deb over for dinner and a tour of the asylum on Saturday night. Deb was the main organiser of East Timor Women Australia and Clinton is a quietly brilliant political scientist and intelligence analyst and it had been several years (far too long!) since we had spent good time in each other's company. Somewhat related, caseopaya and I went to see The Imitation Game and the delightfully deco Balwyn Cinema today. It was a good film, a popular and somewhat fictionalised story of a one of the great contributions to ending Nazism and the invention of computing. Edit Neglected to mention that earlier this week went in to get my eyes checked, for the first time in eleven years (I'm lazy about some things). They've barely changed; if I were to get new glasses it would be pure vanity, and I wasn't vain enough to accept the $790 pair that were on offer.

Comments

[helvetica]

Wow I feel very obtuse for not knowing that there was such discord surrounding Australia day. As a Canadian I have watched similar events in my country my whole life, but there are general agreements between our aboriginals and the government. We have disputes over specific things, but none as big as this (though I guess we don't celebrate an armed invasion!). It saddens me to read this, I would be upset too!

Also that guy seems so slimy! How can people praise such as him? How can he sleep at night?!

[tcpip]

> As a Canadian I have watched similar events in my country my whole life, but there are general agreements between our aboriginals and the government.

My understanding is that Canada has generally done a better job with aboriginal land rights than Australia has, although the establishment of Native Title following the Mabo and Wik titles helped a great deal. There are some (including myself) who think that "Australia Day" should be replaced with Mabo Day as a national public holiday, although I recognise that's still a minority position. There's still may Australians who (a) actively dislike aboriginals or (b) think they should 'get over it' or (c) simply don't care.

> How can he sleep at night?!

The Queen's consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, House Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg?

He sleeps in an extremely comfortable bed I imagine.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I figure when Abbott is reminding his nervous backbench of the dangers of changing leadership, he's not just being abstract. Abbott is the avatar of vindictiveness; if he gets taken down he'll make Rudd look like a choir boy in comparison.

This leaves the Libs in rather a quandary. Do they go the whole term with someone so out of touch he could leave them unelectable for a generation? Or do they replace him, creating a worm in their guts to eat them from the inside?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There's been talk of Julie Bishop taking over, although I suspect she'll be painted with her legal work preventing asbestosis victims and their families receiving compensation.

I suspect you're right about Abbott being a vindictive loser, but the possibility does exist that he'll simply fall apart entirely. I hope you're right about the Tories being unelectable for a generation.. But we were saying that after Howard. It cuts both ways, Labor has to govern itself next time as well as the country.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Agreed. All that Labor need to do is work as a team for a full term. I feel this is made more difficult by their lack of belief in a truly Leftward Path; which has turned them into the "Not As Bad as the Liberals" Party.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's a crisis that's been facing social democracy of all stripes in recent decades. In the post-WWII period they could say that they were utilising the socialism of the east and the democracy of the west and that seemed to run fairly well for them. With the collapse of the eastern bloc however, they've lost their commitment to that half of the equation and they've become a more palatable version of capitalism.

It will be interesting to see whether the recent election in Greece does anything to the European political landscape as a whole.