As if things weren’t already bad enough, Moscow’s man has just robbed us of a deity
Inconceivable! Russia’s ambassador to Australia, Grigory Loginov, on Sky News yesterday:
To assassinate (former spy Sergei Skripal) … a week before the presidential elections in Russia and on the eve of soccer championship in Russia, and to assassinate him with … a chemical weapon which caused an extreme noise all over the world, my gosh it’s (like) something (out of) bad sci-fi.
Moscow-based British journalist Marc Bennetts reports in The Guardian, March 9:
Russian state television has warned “traitors” and Kremlin critics that they should not settle in England because of an increased risk of dying in mysterious circumstances. “Don’t choose England as a place to live. Whatever the reasons, whether you’re a professional traitor to the motherland or you just hate your country in your spare time, I repeat, no matter, don’t move to England,” the presenter Kirill Kleymenov said during a news program on Channel One, state TV’s flagship station. “Something is not right there. Maybe it’s the climate. But in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with a grave outcome. People get hanged, poisoned, they die in helicopter crashes and fall out of windows in industrial quantities.”
Some bad news. Back to Sky News yesterday and the topic of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine:
Loginov: We would never shoot a (civilian) plane. And, actually, for what reason?
Samantha Maiden: Tony Abbott says that you did.
Loginov: Tony Abbott — he knows, but he is not a god. Maybe only the God almighty (knows).
The Russians at least are having a unifying effect. Bill Shorten on Melbourne’s ABC 774 yesterday:
Jon Faine: This is what emboldens Mr Putin, isn’t it? He conducts an act of aggression and there’s no doubt that he’s behind it, everyone acknowledges that, and next to nothing is the response.
Shorten: Well, actually if you go back and look at the response when Tony Abbott — forget about his shirt-fronting comments to Putin — but when he expressed his anger at what happened to Australians on that plane, we were in complete solidarity with Tony Abbott and again with Malcolm Turnbull here.
On Nine’s Today show yesterday:
Ben Fordham: Why has it gone down like a lead balloon all over the country, this policy from Bill Shorten?
Christopher Pyne: Well Ben, Bill Shorten’s tax grabs are starting to make the landing on the beach in Saving Private Ryan look like a tea party.
Not that it has to be a tea party. Pyne on Adelaide’s FiveAA yesterday:
This policy makes the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan look like a dance party, it is such a disaster.
Dance party, tea party. Either way, Bill Shorten can feel encouraged. Open Culture on September 13, 2016:
Not long after Saving Private Ryan came out, the buzz had it that, had nothing but a two-hour blank screen followed its opening sequence depicting the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944, Steven Spielberg would still win an Oscar.
Pub test. The Deputy Prime Minister in Wagga Wagga yesterday:
Michael McCormack: I have met Sir Peter (Cosgrove) on many, many occasions. He’s actually a bit of an aficionado of the Thirsty Crow, and each and every time I’ve been sworn in to a ministry — and that’s been five or six times now — Sir Peter has sworn me in. And he’s always mentioned, as we shook hands, the Thirsty Crow. So, to the team down at the Thirsty Crow, the Governor-General knows where you are and likes your craft beer.
Journalist: Are you guys heading there for a beer after this?
McCormack: No. In fact, I’m headed back down to Wodonga to talk about the North East rail.