Mobile phone link to brain cancer? Duh.

Is this a surprise to anyone? I mean, really.

Klaxons

It's weird, but remixes of the Klaxons are just far superior to the originals. Listen to this and tell me if I'm wrong:

Kevin Rudd so far

There has been little activity here because Kevin is doing a sterling job. How can a political blog survive when the government is in its honeymoon period and the dastardly opposition is in such tatters? Hmm.

Crystal Castles at Brown Alley in Melbourne

Saw Crystal Castles last night. Brown Alley is a wicked little venue (what venue in Melbourne isn't?) and it was worth going for those moments when the crowd was entranced by CC's sludgy 8-bit goodness, as opposed to jumping all over my polished leather shoes.

The band, perhaps deservedly, treated its juvenile audience with utter contempt, turning up 1 hour late to a scheduled 11.30pm show which the teenagers and I had shelled out $25 to see ("It's my 18th birthday!" shouted one young thing), and then proceeding to play for something like 27 minutes of the scheduled 30 (including a 4 minute synth intro which was sheer indulgence).

The music was interesting, consisting mostly of digitally-produced sounds and a vocalist screaming into her mike whose audio level was intentionally kept relatively low. The effect, at its best, was to jar the audience's collective senses with digital goo. At its worst, it was adolescent, and one wonders why this makes it while other good music withers, sans distribution deal, along with its makers in dodgy retail jobs in the suburbs - but much the same could probably be said of plenty of good art.

No sooner had I left the children to continue assaulting each other in the mosh pit than the vocalist dropped the mike and walked off stage. That, it would seem, was all we deserved. (Maybe because it was an ad hoc gig. But probably not.)

When I complained to my mate Andrew that the pretension muddied the music, he said something about letting them be musicians, and of course he was right.

An interesting moment for Labor

In my adult life, I have not seen a Federal Labor government.

And as someone who voted Labor this time around, contributing to the Liberal decimation in my own small way, I have to worry. Howard's government was the beneficiary of the biggest mining boom this country has seen in the post-war period.

John Howard, wrongly, got the credit for all of it.

Keating presided over the recession of the early 1990s, and, wrongly, got blamed for the lot of it.

This boom can't last. What goes up must come down. And Federal Labor will probably be at the helm if and when it does.

Guess who the electorate will blame?

The coming landslide

It will be a landslide this Saturday.

This is worthwhile reading.

Why I've had a gutful

Desperate to claw himself back from the brink of oblivion, Howard has sunk to new lows. Now he's attacking welfare recipients who are addicted to hard drugs.

It's not enough that these people are suffering. Howard will trample on the weak and powerless, the poor and the underprivileged, if he thinks these kinds of populist law and order policies will advantage him politically.

I have yet to examine the policy, but my prediction is that it has been ill-researched and will, at the very least, lead to an increase in drug-related crime. By targeting poor drug users (no policy yet to target middle- and upper-class drug users), he will not only exacerbate their hardship, but he will increase the incentive for them to commit crimes in order to be able to afford the drugs to feed their habit.

Instead of giving tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts (translating to a few bucks a week for all but the wealthiest Australians), why aren't public funds being spent on worthy causes - such as creating a robust medical solution to drug dependency?

The Herald reported: "We are the zero-tolerance coalition when it comes to drugs," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.

"It's not right that people should have control of taxpayer money when they have been convicted of such offences."

This is the problem with drug policy: populists like Howard follow rather than lead, and continue to push the criminalization of drug use. Why drug addiction is criminal remains a mystery to me. Of course, nobody asks the question.

But the real reason I've had a gutful is that there is no real opposition to Howard's right-wing radicalism. While I'll be having a celebration next Saturday night as the results come in, and toast Howard's defeat speech, I've been bored to tears by this econocentric campaign. With all the serious issues we are facing, Howard has shifted this country so far toward right-wing ultra-individualism such that it simply dominates the agenda.

Of polls and Wentworth

Galaxy called me up last Thursday night to poll me for Wentworth. The results were reported by News Corporation. All I can say to Liberals and undecided voters in Wentworth is: please, do a donkey vote! Guess who your preferences will flow to?

I plan to be in Canberra on election eve to watch the landslide from the cliff's edge. And wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to see not just the ousting of Howard, and not just Maxine McKew in Bennelong (woohoo!), but also Labor in Wentworth?! Christmas will have come early.

Negative campaigns and the gullible punters

Well of course the latest Newspoll is showing the Coalition narrowing the gap. This just proves that while everyone hates negative campaigning, it works.

The deceit in this election cycle's scare campaign is just breathtaking. You'd hope that the electorate would be intelligent enough to see through it. Hope springs eternal.

Here's the dodgy ad the Libs are using now, apparently (I don't watch network TV so I'm relying on the Libs' YouTube post):



Now check out this excellent parody:



Here's the real ad it's parodying:



God help us all if this mob gets back in. It defies comprehension how anyone with a brain in their skull and a modicum of good taste could vote in a cabinet with Joe Hockey in it, let alone Helen Coonan and the other useless hacks Howard has elevated for their loyalty to his personal whims (talk about me-tooism!)

Can't wait for November 24.