Day 22- Old friends

Day 21 passed me by. Unlike the bloggers featured in this piece by James Massola, I couldn't keep up. And nor am I terribly upset by being omitted by said piece- there's 1000's of us tapping away at this, right? And Grogs Gamut (the blog featured in the piece) is a good read. A long read, but a good one (his tweets are a little insufferable though). Thing is, this blog exists as a coping mechanism. For me. And I gots to say, it's getting tougher to cope. But long, whining and windblown missives on leadership, what the point of the Labor party is and just what could happen under an Abbott Gov are for another day. Today's story is one of friendship- old friends moving on, moving forward, together, looking forward to moving forward, going forward, etc.

Fairfax told us this morning, via their Neilson poll, that the Opposition remains in the lead, losing one point from their two party count (a point that went not directly to Labor, but via the Greens, whose primary has lifted to 13%, and who will receive a post all their own, soon). A Galaxy poll in key marginals indicated a swing of between 1.3% and 1.6% to Labor, and a Newspoll in marginals indicated something similar- however, these swings haven't put Labor in a winning position in these seats (such as Bowman and Eden Monaro), but simply stemmed the bleeding. Meanwhile a Westpoll indicates that Labor are doing ok in WA. Point being? Exactly what pollster, and self confessed focus group pioneer Hugh Mackay says in his piece in todays Herald. That, as far as polls go, they don't really do nothin' but fuel journalists with pages to fill, until the last last week of the campaign. That, and the fact that these tight numbers indicate how neither party, and neither leader, has been able to involve and engage the populace.

For the actual interest in this campaign has been from the sideline soap operas, none bigger than the Rudd factor. Today Julia and Kevin sat down together for a chinwag, maybe tea and a biscuit, maybe some Baileys and milk. It looked awkward. You'd expect that. If it was worthwhile, if the photo from the photo op does something for the Labor campaign, it wasn't obvious.

It almost looks Photoshopped. But it's not. Via Fairfax

And then, just when you thought Channel 9 couldn't go lower/scummier/shittier (Hey Hey! Ray Martin! Laurie Oakes! ), they trot out Mark Latham as a 'reporter', and the tweeters discuss his standover, macho horseshit approach when interviewing Gillard. It'll make interesting viewing I guess, but from all reports she handled it with grace, and Latham did not. No alarms and no surprises. 

Ugly stuff Latham. Via News.

The tweetfolk went a little nuts over the presser that Latham crashed, with questions on policy going missing and replaced with questions on former leaders from several in the press pack. On the one hand, we, the governed, need the hacks to get under the political skin. On the other, they've not got a lot of ideas to question, have they?

For the record, Latham, in the photo above, was wondering aloud, in that special way of his, why someone from Labor had complained about his being there as a Ch. 9 operative. Jeez Mark. I just can't imagine. 

By the way- has anyone thrown down any ideas about the country? No? Ok. Maybe tomorrow.