Say no to cheap punk bandwagon jumpers

The Telegraph's current headline (as I write) is a lame-as-hell interview with ex-Australian PM John Howard.

For those who don't remember Howard (and there will most likely be many of you), he's a nasty little wanker of a politician who stayed in power in Australia for 11 years by riding out a boom driven by the Chinese demand for Australia's raw materials exports whilst pandering to the worst xenophobic instincts of the Australian voters and imposing fascist industrial relations laws. When he was swept away by Kevin Rudd's Labor party in 2007 it was the best electoral night in years (until the recent US election).

Suddenly he's trying to sound like someone with a clue on economic policy, but sadly he doesn't seem to have even the most basic grasp of economics. "It's dangerous to go too far into debt" - certainly, but the alternative of cutting back spending would get us into Herbert Hoover 1930s territory, and that's even worse.

His main policy suggestion in response to the slump is pure Reagan/Thatcherism: let's deregulate the labour market even more - making it even easier for big business to exploit workers than it already is. But John: large chunks of the industrialised world have already been following these right-wing policies for 25 years at least. And it's led to economic disaster.

What's perhaps saddest about this is that a broadsheet national newspaper thought this was a strong enough story to lead on. What next? Robert Mugabe on economic policy? Or maybe an interview with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, just re-elected with 100% of the vote. They have about as much to say about the current economic situation that's useful as John Howard does. And that's the sad truth.

Rock on Rudd

Initial exit polls suggest that little Johnnie Howard is goin' down in the Australian election.

Please god, make it so (said by a good atheist who nonetheless loves Patrick Stewart). Howard is, more than any other world leader apart from Bush, a cheap punk... a nasty little populist fascist who has introduced the most draconian labour laws you will find anywhere outside China and the United Arab Emirates, and backed the US's loony foreign policies to the hilt.

Also, at the 2003 World Cup final, when Australia gave one of the most gutsy performances I have ever seen in an international rugby match, and very nearly overturned the hot favourites, England, Howard was handing out the losers' medals to them and he was very nearly spitting on those poor bastards. It was a display of misanthropy and contempt on a grand scale... which made it obvious he was a cheap little wanker.

I know very little about Labor [sic]'s Kevin Rudd, but he can't be any worse than Howard. Also, there is a faint chance he might be related to AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd, and that would be worth voting for in itself. Rock on Rudd.