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It's been an interesting week in anglophone politics. Jeremy Cobryn was elected leader of the British Labour Party with almost 60% of the vote, a conclusive mandate in anyone's language. Whilst conservatives are having an aneurysm, a further 30,000 people have joined since his win. Meanwhile on the other side of the Big Pond, Bernie Sanders continues to go from strength to strength - one speech that really caught my attention was to Liberty 'University', a conservative religious institution where he emphasized the morality of economic justice. Finally in Australia the ultra-conservative and deeply unpopular Prime Minister Tony Abbott was overthrown in a party-room coup by the more liberal Malcolm Turnbull, who nevertheless has committed to existing policies.

On a completely unrelated personal note, last weekend I hit my thumb and broke the skin under nail causing some bleeding. A day later it was clear that it was infected. The day after that I was at the doctor's who prescribed some antibiotics. Alas, the infection continued and my thumb swelled, creating something like a felon infection. It was quite painful to say the least with significant pressure; not as bad a root canal, but lasting longer, and getting worse. So it was back to the doctor who promptly drained the wound by piercing the thumbnail and wound entrance with a paperclip heated by a lighter. Such are the wonders of modern technology.

On the gaming side of the week, I've reached level 15 in Ingress and will make 16, the top level, in a couple of weeks at the current rate. Thursday night was our regular Laundry files game, finally finished dealing with Deep Ones in the Bass Strait and the escaped Shoggoths. An order was also received to purchase my entire Torg collection, a game which I quite liked but really wasn't using, and that was shipped today. Also had a number of reviews published on rpg.net this week, previously from RPG Review; RuneQuest Pirates, Pirates of the Vistula, En Garde!, 7th Sea Players Guide and Game Masters Guide, Freiburg, and Freeport.

Finally, in some work-related news I've resigned my position as Quality Management Coordinator, one of the many hats I wear. I was going to run an internal audit this week, but the managers weren't interested which is consistent with their behaviour in the past year of ignoring reports of various standard breaches and improvement requests. I was particularly frustrated by this in a business sense, because the empirical evidence is utterly overwhelming that continuous improvement, controlled documentation, procedural transparency, etc, are the foundation of success over ad-hoc decision making which perhaps counter-intuitively, is more time consuming. I foresee naught by doom and gloom as a result of this disengagement of the QA process. Resignation was indeed a very appropriate word choice.

Date: 2015-09-20 01:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com
Depends on how vindictive Abbott is, which is a hard guess. He worked so hard in unconstructive criticism to become Prime Minister and then showed that he didn't know what to do when he got it.

Julie Bishop, who is nicknamed 'the cockroach' due to her ability to survive as deputy under multiple leaders, is sometimes raised as a possibility but I don't know whether she wants the top job.

Morrison is considered a possibility and had the 'advantage' of being loathed by the left, having taken a hardline on both asylum seekers and welfare recipients. I don't know what his internal party skills are like.

Much depends on whether Turnbull is as uninspiring as he when he was leader of the opposition.

Date: 2015-09-20 02:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zenicurean.livejournal.com
If this continues, Australia may want to install a revolving door to the PM's office at some point, I suppose. I'm... less sanguine about a lot of the developments you list -- I dread Corbyn ever taking charge of the UK's foreign and security policy, just a little bit -- but, based on what little I know of Mr Abbott, I'd say that congratulations are in order for getting rid of him.

Date: 2015-09-20 11:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com
Foreign policy is Cobryn's weak point but I suspect it won't turn out as bad as has been made out. Besides it will be very entertaining to see him drag Blair into the dock :)

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