They are passionate about their politics in regional Australia [Part Two]

From The Daily Examiner letters to the editor on 2 August 2010:

Roll on, poll

LIKE many other Australians, August 21, can't come soon enough for mine; not only because watching the election campaign play out is like following a perverse, B-grade comedy of errors, but also because we will finally see an end to Fred Perring's daily banal bleatings on the minutiae of the subject.

As if vague interpretation of Julia Gillard's body language and last week's bizarre comparison of Gillard to an ageing bovine weren't enough, his inane commentary plunged to all-new depths of absurdity in his letter of Thursday, July 29 in which he draws the reader's attention to the 'seeds' of Marxist socialism somehow lodged in Ms Gillard's DNA (I remain unsure whether this is a mixed metaphor or an actual scientific claim).

By definition, protecting the rights of the worker underpins the ideology of the Labor Party, so it stands to reason that its representatives would cite successful historical figures from the international labour movement, Nye Bevan for example, as inspiration.

To use the parlance of our times: D'oh!

Based on his repeated warnings, Mr Perring seems to think that we need to be vigilant against reds under the bed, despite the fact that communism was pretty much discredited decades ago, if not before, then certainly by the time of the epic and spectacular failure of the USSR, a fact of which Ms Gillard is no doubt aware.

Judging by her performance as a Member of Parliament and Prime Minister so far, perhaps a more accurate reflection of her views, she appears to be somewhat pragmatic and realistic about the practicality of establishing a new Communist paradise for the 21st century, even for a former student socialist.

It's a pity that Mr Perring is allowing quantity to take precedence over quality; perhaps if he saved the most insightful of his observations for a weekly tirade they would be of more interest and amusement, not to mention equally at home in the editorial pages of Quadrant.


FELICITY WATSON
South Grafton