Australia

Monday

Alex Massie

The Australian Way of Love

Noted without comment: A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman’s face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch. The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are “not recognised flotation devices’’. Police and a State Emergency Services crew were called to the rescue when the woman and a man, both 19, struck trouble at Warrandyte North about 4.30pm yesterday. They were floating down the river on two inflatable dolls and had just passed the Pound Bend Tunnel when the woman lost her toy in turbulent water. She clung to a floating tree,

Saturday

The Spectator

Leader: King’s ransom

When George Osborne decided to raise VAT, more months ago than he will admit, he did not imagine that he would be compounding the worst inflation in Western Europe. Prices are currently falling in Ireland, flat in Germany and rising only slightly throughout the rest of the Eurozone and America. But in Britain, inflation is back with a vengeance. This week, millions of shopkeepers raised prices by far more than the 2.1 per cent needed to accommodate the new tax. They did so not out of greed, but in preparation for a year of rising heating, staff and transport costs. The shopkeepers realise what Mervyn King, the Governor of the

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Cricketing over Christmas

How do cricket players get on with touring abroad over Christmas? Mike Atherton, the former England captain, penned an article on the matter for our Christmas issue in 2004. With England currently taking it to the Aussies in Melbourne, I thought it would be a good time to excavate it from the archives:  Some like it hot, Michael Atherton, The Spectator, 18 December 2004 ‘It is no more a place for them than a trench on the Somme’ was the withering verdict of John Woodcock, the Times’s cricket correspondent, on the presence of wives on an England tour three decades ago. Woodcock, it must be said, was and is single,

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: If Swanny Don’t Get You, Anderson Must

So, little blogging here. Partly because, even more so than usual, I’ve been living on Australian time these past few days. I’ve a quick piece up at Critical Reaction on the Adelaide Massacre: Never mind ‘Were you up for Portillo?’ Were you up for Adelaide? An entire generation of England supporters have waited all their lives for this sort of payback moment. Not since 1985 have England dominated a series in this fashion; not since Mike Gatting led MCC to victory in 1986-87 have England enjoyed even a marginal supremacy Down Under.  Indeed, Gatting’s side was the last to win a ‘live’ test in Australia. You have to be over 35

Saturday

Alex Massie

Stick It Up Your Punter

There are only three things wrong with this Australian side. They can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field. A harsh verdict and one that may need to be revised before the end of the series, but one that’s an accurate appraisal of Australia’s most recent efforts. This is a good but hardly great England side. It ain’t Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond hammering these hapless Aussie bowlers but Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott… “There’s only one side playing cricket out there – and it’s not Australia” said a commentator on Test Match Sofa* which is the kind of deliciously piquant assessment England supporters have been waiting to dish

Monday

Alex Massie

517/1

The first thing to be said of a test in which a side batting third can score 517/1 is that the wicket was not fit for test match cricket. The second is that, for once, this did not matter. Hilarity trumped common sense. None of us, not being present for the Melbourne test in 1912, can recall the 323 run stand shared by Jack Hobbs and Wilfred Rhodes but, somewhat sadly, that’s now been wiped from the record books by Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott. Actually, the wicket was worse than even 517/1 suggests. The teams combined for a score of 624/2 in the second innings. That’s a Sri Lankan

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Ashes! The Ashes!

Four years later than should have been the case, Andrew Strauss will skipper England in Australia. English cricket has righted itself since the Flintoff and Pietersen debacles. For a spell one sensed that marketing considerations were influencing cricketing decisions. The great strength of the present Strauss-Flower regime is that it is, in the end, almost dull. No drama, no fuss and precious little intrigue either. Australia, by contrast, are in some mild kind of flux. Where England picked their team before leaving home, Australia have been scrabbling to find players with sufficient form and fitness to justify inclusion. Xavier Doherty’s inclusion seems sensible but is based more on hope and

Friday

Alex Massie

Australian Cricket Sells Its Soul

Hard though it may be to imagine, it is entirely possible that Cricket Australia (as they style themselves these days) are even more cloth-headed and reprehensible than their counterparts at the ECB. At the very least they give a more than passable impression of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. If press accounts are reliable indicators, Cricket Australia is a shameless organisation. If they weren’t such a collection of Ocker Moneygrubbers they might not have arranged the recent meaningless, pointless, set of one day matches against Sri Lanka that have hampered their players’ preparations for the Ashes. Nor, had they a clue, would they have insisted

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Ashes: Post-War XIs

Ahead of the Times revealing its post-war XIs, Norm has made his own selection. As you’d expect, they’re pretty strong teams. It’s a little depressing to realise that selecting a Greatest Post-1945 Australian side is much, much more difficult than doing the same for England. In fact I don’t think I can disagree with any part of Norm’s England XI: 1. Len Hutton, 2. Geoffrey Boycott, 3. Ken Barrington, 4. Denis Compton, 5. Peter May, 6. Ian Botham, 7. Alan Knott, 8. Jim Laker, 9. Fred Trueman, 10. Derek Underwood, 11. Brian Statham. You could, mind you, make a case for Frank Tyson. Alec Bedser is also unfortunate to miss-out.

Thursday

Matthew Elliott

Lessons from the midterms for the AV referendum

Amid all the excitement of the US midterms, a small, local ballot took place which has important lessons for the UK’s referendum on the Alternative Vote – due to take place six months on Friday. Like us, America uses the straightforward first-past-the-post voting system for its thousands of elected offices – from local school boards and sheriffs to races for governors’ mansions and the White House itself. Their well-established primary system also gives voters a direct say in who the candidates should be – taking power away from the parties and making politicians more responsive to the demands of their local electorate. Because US politics is dominated by two parties,

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Annals of Leadership: Welsh Division

David Lloyd George is, I think, the only Welshman to have become Prime Minister but he was born in Manchester. Does this mean that Julie Gillard is the first Welsh-born person to become Prime Minister (or its equivalent) anywhere on earth? Surely Wales must have spawned someone who has been in charge of somewhere before now. But if so, who? (Entries are restricted to modern politics: in other words you can’t have Henry VII.) (Tom Switzer’s dyspeptic piece on Gillard’s kinda-victory is worth your while.)

Tom Switzer

Gillard’s fractious premiership

‘The definition of an Independent Member of Parliament, viz., one that could not be depended upon.’ – Former British prime minister, the Earl of Derby to Queen Victoria. In the August 21 federal election down under, the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard copped a stunning rebuke from the Australian people. Consider this: Tony Abbott’s centre-right Liberal-National Coalition won nearly half a million more votes than the Australian Labor Party. It secured more seats than the ALP (73 to 72 in the 150-seat House of Representatives). And the Labor administration became the first first-term government since 1931 to lose a parliamentary majority. So how does Labor claim a mandate

Saturday

David Blackburn

Too close to call Down Under

Australia has spoken, but it will take some time to determine what they’ve said. ABC is reporting that Australia is headed for its first hung parliament since 1940. Exit polls suggested that Julia Gillard’s Labor party would win the most seats; but it now looks as if Tony Abbott’s Coalition has obtained 73 seats, one more than Labor; there are also 4 independents and 1 Green MP to throw into the mix. Conservative Home is following the election in detail. Weak and indecisive government may follow, but the Coalition has the political momentum. 6 months ago Kevin Rudd was, in racing parlance, a dead-cert for re-election. Mounting enmity and severe

Saturday

Geoffrey Blainey

Identity politics

In the past half century, much ingenuity and humdrum effort has gone into redefining Australia as a nation. Politicians, intellectuals and advertisers have joined in the game of searching or ‘yearning for an identity’. The phrase ‘national identity’, now a bit boring, arrived only in the 1950s. In their thoughtful book, James Curran and Stuart Ward argue that this game was inspired by the global decline of Britain, the withdrawing of British forces from Asia, the coupling of Westminster with the European Union and the feeling that Australians were becoming ‘abandoned Britons’. It should be added that Australia was also abandoning Britain. The dramatic swing in Australian trade from Britain

Thursday

Alex Massie

Great Political Feuds: Hawke vs Keating

As Danny Finkelstein tweets, never mind Blair vs Brown vs Mandelson, the feud between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating is just as entertaining. The latest outbreak of fighting has been caused by a new biography of Hawke, written by his wife. Keating does not approve of its depiction of their time in government. As this letter to Hawke demonstrates: Dear Bob, It was with much disappointment that I opened The Weekend Australian to find on page three the headline “Hawke’s take on ditherer Keating and lying Richo” and to read at the first line that either you or Blanche had described me as “an ailing vacillator”. As you know, I

Wednesday

David Martin-Jones

Old South Wales socialism made Gillard who she is

Australia’s 27th prime minister is not only the first female holder of the office, but also only the second foreign-born PM. Like the first, Billy Hughes, she is Welsh. Ironically, Wales has now produced twice as many prime ministers of Australia as it has of the UK, of which it remains a constituent part. However, Julia Gillard makes little of her heritage. ‘I always knew, growing up,’ she said, ‘that we had chosen this place [Adelaide] because it offered us opportunities beyond those our homeland could have delivered. My parents could muse on what life might have held for them in Wales. Frankly, I cannot. Australia is and always has

Thursday

Alex Massie

Growing up on Struggle-Street

Tom Switzer knows much more about Australian politics than I ever will, so I commend his post on Kevin Rudd’s downfall to you. (For an alternative take see John McTernan here.) What I would say, mind you, is that it’s a bad idea for a Prime Minister to abandon his signature issue simply because the going gets a little bit tough. That’s what Rudd did on climate change legislation* however and, frankly, even from a distance of many thousands of miles, one can see why his stock would struggle to recover from that debacle. Anyway, let’s talk about journalism and political terminology. Reading the accounts of Australia’s latest political shenanigans

Tom Switzer

Fallen idol

‘A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren’t still there, he’s no longer a political leader.’ Perhaps nothing better describes the extraordinary downfall of Kevin Rudd than American presidential adviser Bernard Baruch’s remarks in 1932. Extraordinary, because for three years from 2006 to late 2009, Australia’s prime minister was in the political stratosphere. And yet, today, Rudd was knifed in the most ruthless, swift and effective fashion. And the hit men? Factional warlords of the Australian union movement. The Opposition leader Tony Abbott reflected the views of many Australians when he told Parliament today: ‘A

Thursday

Alex Massie

Mods & Trads: Australian Edition

An interesting piece from the BBC’s Nick Bryant, arguing that Australian conservatives have concluded that Cameron failed to win an overall majority because he was insufficiently clear – that is, right-wing. The Liberal leader Tony Abbott appears determined not to make the same mistake [sic*] and is modifying, that is to say abandoning, some of his predecessors modernising touches as Australia prepares for its election next year. If Abbott wins – though at present the polls suggest the electorate doesn’t like Abbott’s Liberals or Prime Minister Rudd’s Labour party and would, in a burst of Aussie Cleggmania hand the Greens 16% of the vote – then we can expect the

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Who’s Afraid of a Hung Parliament?

So it seems you have to vote Conservative to accept the party’s invitation to join the government of Great Britain? Who knew? Tory warnings of the dire consequences of a hung parliament are understandable but, I suspect, unfortunate. There is little evidence that the electorate believes that a hung parliament will be a disaster, far less than they can be cajoled into thinking that they’re letting Britain down if they don’t vote Conservative. And that, my friends, is the underlying message sent by the Tories’ blitz against a hung parliament. A hung election might not be ideal but it might also be a fitting end to this exhausted, depressing parliament.