Foxy
I think many politicians begin well but power and career aspirations can be a corrupting influence as well as a strong motivator to do good. Include the pressure of Party politics and you have a volatile mix and goes to support the call for a stronger regime of checks and balances.

Working in parliament is addictive and often participants - staffers and politicians alike - become too far removed from the goal and the real world. The pull becomes feeding the addiction of career aspiration, power and ensuring participation in the 'game'. It is a strong character that can resist the 'self' and keep their eye on the ball.

Some politicians like Bob Brown do this better than others and have managed to retain their decency and passion for a fairness (as tired that phrase is).

The Blue Cross,

I genuinely want to know - what do you believe in? What pleases you?

I don't ask this in any attempt to trap you or to launch an attack. I'm genuinely interested.

In an earlier thread, I accused you of having a dim view of humanity and our world because you always seem to be very negative about everything. It certainly seems that your threads are consistently tinged with negativity and loathing, but I'd like to apologise for that cruel accusation and re-frame it positively.

You are clearly disenchanted with both sides of our political system, and with both leaders. What would you consider to be a positive outcome at the next election? Pie-in-the-sky stuff is more than welcome as a response. I find you to be a very complex character and suspect that your apparent negativity is actually a symptom of some passionate thoughts and ideals. I'd like to get some idea of what those ideals are, if you are happy to share.

I have locked verbal horns with The Blue Cross a few times.
Let me give you my views of who he is.
Like myself a unionist.
Much as I was in my youth from the left, both in poltics and far left of reality.
These folk are unable to understand time waits for no man, we have moved on a great deal from the lights on the hill,not forgotten,for me not forgiven, those dark hungry days.
My Dad a man who turned his shirt white with salt, hard enough to stand partly up its self at work, went hungry so his kids could eat.
He was union/Labor forever.
But the dream of communism once followed was is and always will be a nigh mare,it made slaves of workers and look at the leader of that slave nation north Korea he is just one who miss used workers.
Socialism, what a great concept, communism and even Nazi,ism blackened its name.
But we do too, right now TBC we practice it, we let people who never want to help them selves have a free ride,on our backs,then walk in to election booths and vote conservative.
The Blue Cross is best at throwing stones at a world he is out of step with.
Me? two hours already sending e mail news letters to members in 3 different industry's the union I serve is growing its member not my comrades but my mates, I have no comrades that makes me feel good.

I however can not hide from TBC coments I agree with.
Please understand Julia will win the election, will govern well, will be much loved, and I will never trust her.
Simon Crean with Mark Latham and Julia took a great Prime Minister we never had away from me.
Kim.
Crean from within the union movement betrayed it,enough said, he was promoted yesterday.
Will she be silly enough to give Latham job?
My party now will be sharing power new faces and ideas will be heard, a better way to govern Rudd should be rewarded not shunned.
And believe me Julia in about 4 years no more than 5 will fall on the same sword as Kevin,, for the same reasons.
A danger exists for my party, Simon Crean, he must never again have the ear of our leader he is not the man his father was I would run a mile on broken glass to avoid the bloke.

Well, such interest in TBC.

Frankly, there are not many 'positive' posts on OLO, in my 'umble opinion.

We are all complaining about, or proselytising for, one ideal or another and I detect very little shared values across the board, other than, say, the value of OLO as a sounding board for all of us.

I would not like us all to behave in the same way as each other, so Utopian dreams are out.

I see a role for some social and economic friction, to help spur humankind on to better things, which, although hard to see when immersed in the day to day roll-out of 'events', I believe we are achieving, incrementally.

But if life is to be a perpetual learning curve, then it would be good to see more of the population engaged. Not all going to university, nor even TAFE, but seeing some evidence that our community was made up of thinking individuals, rather than reacting, compliant, fearful and scared people.

Graeme's latest OLO survey tells a story, with blue collar voters liking Tory policies,their class enemy, while middle class voters tend more easily towards the ALP and Greens.

Money, as I am sure Belly will agree, helps to make that difference possible, with less time required for worrying about where the food-shelter-health-money is coming from.

But education does too.... a broad education, not just that offered in our sausage-factory coercive schools.

Which is why Tories always prefer not to provide a good education system, and the ALP seem to think they do, sometimes.

Which is also why Gillard was such a total dud as education minister, about a razor blade width above Kemp's low standards and not much better than Bishop.

Belly is correct to be worried about Crean too, who will do absolutely nothing with his new portfolio, including not undoing the anti-worker sections in the IR end of his job that building workers suffer from.

I see no point in being a cheer leader for any politicians here. If they do a good job, that's what we pay them for.

The role of the public critic is to highlight the failings, without siding with any politician at all. It's a good idea to have invested some thought in a solution too, or at least path towards a solution.

These days I vote Green, partly out of having to vote, partly because I like Bob Brown and admire his honesty and community work, partly out of desperation, particularly when I see Senator Hanson-Young, who is a poorly presented dunce much of the time.

Being in Qld, there are no idealist politicians to vote for at the state level, all are dunces and extreme conservatives, whether in the ALP or whatever the Coalition calls itself today. In an act of cutting my-nose-to-spite-my-face, I now exhaust my state vote having voted Green, and I refuse to pass on my preference to anyone else at all (foolishly, Goss brought this system in, so we almost have first-past-the-post here). However, living in a Deep Blue seat, my vote never counts anyway, since all the 'poor folk' here vote National and resent 'book learning', and say 'arkst' (like Anna Bligh does), and, like Barnaby Rubble, think 'pacific' is what you say when emphasising a point '...pacifically... I believe', etc..

At the Commonwealth level, outside the Greens Senate candidates, there is nothing intelligent on offer at all...unless you regard Rudd, Swan, Emmerson and our rightwing ALP Senators as being 'intelligent'.

As for the personal side of my life, this is not the place to blurt it, but suffice to say I am engaged in a wide range of 'community works' and have been for many years, along with many other OLO posters, from all sides of politics.

That is not, I believe, the mark of a total curmudgeon.

And yes Belly, I am 'a unionist', although not currently a member of any, since I am not 'in my calling' at the moment, and I would even, at a pinch, join the AWU if I were to work in an area they covered exclusively.