Hello Gristlers! and welcome to Chewin’ the Gristle, the week’s political bits that we found hard to swallow.
It seems only yesterday that we were talking about a Liberal leader finding that budgie smuggling was no substitute for policies in the Victorian State Election it was a case of deja vu this weekend in NSW. Yes, Peter ‘Whitey’ Debnam was predictably and soundly rolled in the weekend’s NSW State election by a Party made up of a handful of Ministers who are in police custody, the cast of The Sopranos and the lead guy from Everybody Loves Raymond.
Yep, the result showed that Whitey soundly lost the election but you wouldn’t know it from his concession speech on Saturday night. He started off alright giving the impression he was fending off tears but soon after it seemed like he’d mixed up the pages and was reading from his victory speech. The more the speech went on, the more enthusiastic Whitey became, thanking everyone and their dog for the great effort they put in to lose an election that even Simon Crean at his worst could have jagged.
By Tuesday, it seemed that even the role of Opposition Leader might be beyond Whitey as Barry ‘The Biggest Loser’ O’Farrell declared he was challenging for the leadership. We’ll be sad to see the back of Whitey but we’re intrigued by the mental image of The Biggest Loser in budgie smugglers even after the 40 kilos he shed.
Thanks to Bill Leak
Speaking of biggest losers, Santo ‘So Nice They Named Him Twice’ Santoro completed his swan dive with a triple pike by resigning from the Senate last week. While there weren’t many tears shed for the tubby Right-wing head-kicker, it seems Alexander ‘Too Freaky’ Downer was a rare exception. Freaky was obviously upset about the loss of a ‘very good Minister’ and was blaming the Labor Party in a pretty raunchy way:
Santo Santoro is a human being. Does he have to be whipped and chastised more and more and more?
What is it with Freaky and S&M?
Now speaking of tubby and raunchy, John Howard’s ‘big bear of a man,’ Joe ‘Cuddly Bear’ Hockey was in a bit of hot water this week as it was alleged he tried to intervene in the increasingly problematic car-parts manufacturer Tristar. Tristar allegedly has a bunch of workers who have no work but are being kept on until their redundancy agreement expires later this year a situation that looks fairly unflattering for Workchoices. Cuddly Bear had allegedly met with Tristar and suggested that they make the workers redundant and then re-hire them on AWAs. The fact that this would be illegal seemed to be purely a ‘technicality’ to Cuddly Bear. I guess that’s what industrial relations flexibility means or was that moral flexibility?
Finally, after weeks of non-stop mud-slinging Kevin ‘Charlie Brown’ Rudd decided to get on the front foot and raid the Future Fund to pay for a national high speed broadband network. The proposal was light on detail but heavy on controversy with the Libs screaming about misuse of the Future Fund and Charlie Brown calling it nation building in the style of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
The Gristle is not sure whether this is a good idea but is pretty sure that it would be the first major nation building scheme that will primarily be used to access pornography.
You can catch the Gristle on Radio 2SER 107.3 in Sydney or on the web at www.2ser.com every Friday evening from 6:00 to 6:30.
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