Lord Alexander The Great

[Gozu]

It would seem "the idiot son of the aristocracy" now wants to try his hand at being Lord Mayor after he's sorted out that little Cyprus thing. This from someone who was an absolute disaster as leader of the Liberal Party. If Alexander Downer didn't exist you'd have to make him up:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/stor ... 01,00.html

[dedja]

FFS, please shoot me ...

Surely he'd make a great ambassador to Afghanistan or Iraq? ... Kev'07, how about it then?

[Psyber]

I've never quite grasped why so many people dislike Alexander, when they haven't even met him.
I can only conjecture it is about something he symbolises to them, rather than what he is.
Is it simply that he is as well-spoken and polite as Paul Keating is foul-mouthed and abusive?

Obviously some don't dislike him - the article suggests he was approached to stand as mayor, and that he polled well as a prospective SA Premier.

Speaking to The Advertiser from Cyprus, Mr Downer confirmed unnamed interests lobbied him to run for Adelaide City Council's top office.
In 2007, Mr Downer flagged a switch to state politics to lead the Liberals against Premier Mike Rann in the 2010 state election.
Mr Downer later backed away from the comments, despite an AdelaideNow poll which named him as preferred premier.

[dedja]

I was in his electorate for quite a while ... I guess I'm entitled to not like some of his policies and the way he presents himself.

His weekly articles in the Advertiser doesn't help to change my position.

[Psyber]

I was in his electorate for quite a while ... I guess I'm entitled to not like some of his policies and the way he presents himself.
His weekly articles in the Advertiser doesn't help to change my position.

No argument from me there.
He takes a more Conservative position than I do on some things, and we had some discussions about them when I lived in his electorate, and by email afterwards.
At least he would listen to your case and reply politely, and not turn abusive at any sign of opposing views.

[Jimmy_041]

I have met Downer and he is no dummy

I havent met Paul Keating and dont care if I dont. I think he is a foul mouthed, egocentric bully and a traitor to his original cause

I still fondly recall his defeat address to his electorate where someone yelled out - "You can take the boy out of Bankstown, but you cant take Bankstown out of the boy" He actually winced at the comment

[Jimmy_041]

I was in his electorate for quite a while ... I guess I'm entitled to not like some of his policies and the way he presents himself.
His weekly articles in the Advertiser doesn't help to change my position.

No argument from me there.
He takes a more Conservative position than I do on some things, and we had some discussions about them when I lived in his electorate, and by email afterwards.
At least he would listen to your case and reply politely, and not turn abusive at any sign of opposing views.

A common affliction it seems..........

[Lazarus]

Ha ha, Downer is an idiot, there is no denying that.

Yes Psyber, he maybe be polite and engaging(to some at least, I'd like to see him converse with the hoi polloi) which is a good characteristic for a pollie, but he is still an idiot.

[Psyber]

Ha ha, Downer is an idiot, there is no denying that.
Yes Psyber, he maybe be polite and engaging(to some at least, I'd like to see him converse with the hoi polloi) which is a good characteristic for a pollie, but he is still an idiot.

I'm still not convinced the "hoi polloi" should be allowed to vote, since they seem to make judgements based only on blind emotion.
[There I am confident I am more conservative than Alexander.]

Technically he can't be an idiot because he managed to get an Economics degree from a major University in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_ret ... haic_terms

Idiot indicated the greatest degree of intellectual disability, where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard himself or herself against common physical dangers.
The term was gradually replaced by the term profound mental retardation.

[Gozu]

"Bidding farewell to our worst foreign minister"

Crikey's Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

So goodbye to Alexander Downer. If nothing else, these Coalition departures are great for marvelling at how young they all looked five minutes ago in the early 1990s. It would be comforting to think that the responsibilities of power aged them all terribly, but, alas, we have all aged along with them. We just don’t have the unforgiving evidence of a life in public to remind us.

That Downer was our worst foreign minister of recent decades goes without saying. Possibly he was our worst ever, but that’s a matter for foreign policy PhDs.

What’s more important is that he chucked in the job in the early part of this decade. From 2001 to 2007, Australia’s foreign policy was essentially outsourced to the United States -- and not to the US State Department, where some good sense has remained under Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, but to the White House.

Under Howard and Downer, we swapped an alliance and friendship based on shared culture and interests, within which there was room for disagreement and debate, for reflexive support for whatever issued from the mouth of George W. Bush or his operator, Dick Cheney. In doing so, Downer and Howard inflicted significant damage on Australians’ perception of our relationship with the US which, had Mark Latham fluked his way to an election victory in 2004, might have been made long-term. It is testimony to the strength of the US-Australia relationship that it looks to have survived the relationship between the Howard Government and Bush Administration reasonably intact.

In abandoning our foreign policy independence, Downer was guilty of two great evils, along with his Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues: leading Australia into an illegal, immoral attack on Iraq that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, if not more, and ruthlessly exploiting the -- in historical terms -- relatively minor threat of Islamic terrorism for crass political purposes.

Compared to those, other Downer f__k-ups like our damaged relationship with PNG are fairly minor.

There were a lot of things about Downer not to like -- but many of them he couldn’t do anything about. It wasn’t his fault that he looked and sounded like the British public school prig from Central Casting, and in some ways it was amusing that Australia was represented for so long by Boy Mulcaster. And the poor bastard never lived down the innocuous business with the Rocky Horror Show stockings.

But he was more like his predecessor Gareth Evans than either would wish to admit -- long-serving foreign ministers, both with grotesquely over-inflated conceptions of their world influence, both somehow encapsulating the very worst of their parties and therefore, automatically, capable of inspiring loathing in opponents. But let’s be charitable -- if nothing else can unite the divided citizens of Cyprus, maybe five minutes with Alex will do the trick.

In the end, AWB summed up Downer’s foreign ministership perfectly: the deliberate turning of a blind eye to the bribery by a National Party scam of a tyrant against whom Downer was at that very moment making the case for war, about whose toppling Downer would later boast -- and against whose forces we would shortly send our troops. The wilful failure of accountability and the intellectual dishonesty of Downer’s response upon discovery -- along with that of Howard and Mark Vaile -- turned even the Howard Government cheerleaders at The Australian against him.

Having bagged the shit out of the guy, let’s end on a more positive note. Downer shared a birthdate with fellow South Australian Natasha Stott Despoja, and he hailed her in a corridor in Parliament House once a few years ago.

"Do you know who else we share a birthday with?" he asked her.

"John Gorton."
He paused, then said, "we all made great leaders didn’t we..."

[Lazarus]

Ha ha, Downer is an idiot, there is no denying that.
Yes Psyber, he maybe be polite and engaging(to some at least, I'd like to see him converse with the hoi polloi) which is a good characteristic for a pollie, but he is still an idiot.

I'm still not convinced the "hoi polloi" should be allowed to vote, since they seem to make judgements based only on blind emotion.
[There I am confident I am more conservative than Alexander.]

Technically he can't be an idiot because he managed to get an Economics degree from a major University in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_ret ... haic_terms

Idiot indicated the greatest degree of intellectual disability, where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard himself or herself against common physical dangers.
The term was gradually replaced by the term profound mental retardation.

As opposed to pure self interest?

[mick]

"Bidding farewell to our worst foreign minister"

Crikey's Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

So goodbye to Alexander Downer. If nothing else, these Coalition departures are great for marvelling at how young they all looked five minutes ago in the early 1990s. It would be comforting to think that the responsibilities of power aged them all terribly, but, alas, we have all aged along with them. We just don’t have the unforgiving evidence of a life in public to remind us.

That Downer was our worst foreign minister of recent decades goes without saying. Possibly he was our worst ever, but that’s a matter for foreign policy PhDs.

What’s more important is that he chucked in the job in the early part of this decade. From 2001 to 2007, Australia’s foreign policy was essentially outsourced to the United States -- and not to the US State Department, where some good sense has remained under Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, but to the White House.

Under Howard and Downer, we swapped an alliance and friendship based on shared culture and interests, within which there was room for disagreement and debate, for reflexive support for whatever issued from the mouth of George W. Bush or his operator, Dick Cheney. In doing so, Downer and Howard inflicted significant damage on Australians’ perception of our relationship with the US which, had Mark Latham fluked his way to an election victory in 2004, might have been made long-term. It is testimony to the strength of the US-Australia relationship that it looks to have survived the relationship between the Howard Government and Bush Administration reasonably intact.

In abandoning our foreign policy independence, Downer was guilty of two great evils, along with his Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues: leading Australia into an illegal, immoral attack on Iraq that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, if not more, and ruthlessly exploiting the -- in historical terms -- relatively minor threat of Islamic terrorism for crass political purposes.

Compared to those, other Downer f__k-ups like our damaged relationship with PNG are fairly minor.

There were a lot of things about Downer not to like -- but many of them he couldn’t do anything about. It wasn’t his fault that he looked and sounded like the British public school prig from Central Casting, and in some ways it was amusing that Australia was represented for so long by Boy Mulcaster. And the poor bastard never lived down the innocuous business with the Rocky Horror Show stockings.

But he was more like his predecessor Gareth Evans than either would wish to admit -- long-serving foreign ministers, both with grotesquely over-inflated conceptions of their world influence, both somehow encapsulating the very worst of their parties and therefore, automatically, capable of inspiring loathing in opponents. But let’s be charitable -- if nothing else can unite the divided citizens of Cyprus, maybe five minutes with Alex will do the trick.

In the end, AWB summed up Downer’s foreign ministership perfectly: the deliberate turning of a blind eye to the bribery by a National Party scam of a tyrant against whom Downer was at that very moment making the case for war, about whose toppling Downer would later boast -- and against whose forces we would shortly send our troops. The wilful failure of accountability and the intellectual dishonesty of Downer’s response upon discovery -- along with that of Howard and Mark Vaile -- turned even the Howard Government cheerleaders at The Australian against him.

Having bagged the s***t out of the guy, let’s end on a more positive note. Downer shared a birthdate with fellow South Australian Natasha Stott Despoja, and he hailed her in a corridor in Parliament House once a few years ago.

"Do you know who else we share a birthday with?" he asked her.

"John Gorton."
He paused, then said, "we all made great leaders didn’t we..."

I always thought gareth Evans was our worst, or maybe the guy who turned a blind eye to the invasion of East Timor in the Whitlam Government.

[Gingernuts]

I think he's as good as any candidate going around for this job, and he wouldn't have the agenda of using the position as a leg up to state/federal politics like the last couple have as he's already been there and done that.

I have lived in his electorate for most of my life and whenever I crossed paths with him he was a very well meaning and approachable man.

And after working at the ACC for some time (not anymore), he can't be any worse that the current Lord Mayor. Harbo's motivations on the most part are all about advancing himself, not the City of Adelaide. This is a common affliction in local government unfortunately, and something that I find quite dishearting after working in the sector now for some time.

[mick]

I find the personal attacks on Downer have more to do with the politics of envy rather than anything concrete. All the lefty heroes with huge chips on the shoulder getting stuck into him. For example I find Mike Rann's way of speaking far more annoying than Downer's what's his excuse for a poncie accent? he's from working class stock isn't he? Sips Champagne whilst reading "Das Kapital" I bet.

[Psyber]

I find the personal attacks on Downer have more to do with the politics of envy rather than anything concrete. All the lefty heroes with huge chips on the shoulder getting stuck into him. For example I find Mike Rann's way of speaking far more annoying than Downer's what's his excuse for a poncie accent? he's from working class stock isn't he? Sips Champagne whilst reading "Das Kapital" I bet.

Most modern Labor pollies are more likely to be reading about how to become a successful capitalist by collecting antique French clocks, or similar methods like successfully renovating a house in Rose Bay, or being given a share of a Piggery.

[Jimmy_041]

Interesting comment regarding Rann and his speech pattern. Born in England, raised in New Zealand, he came to Australia in 1977.

If Downer is "the idiot son of the aristocracy", Rann could be described as “the bastard son of the British Empire”

[Leaping Lindner]

I always thought gareth Evans was our worst, or maybe the guy who turned a blind eye to the invasion of East Timor in the Whitlam Government.

Peacock was actually Foreign Minister when the Indonesians invaded East Timor as Australia was in caretaker government mode at the time. It showed good timing by the bastards as they did it on the 7th december and we went to the polls on december 13th and we had our minds on other things.
Gareth Evans great quote when asked by a journalist about the continual ignoring of successive Australian goverments of the East Timor situation was....
"Well you don't understand international diplomacy."

No Gareth, but I understand genocide.

[Gozu]

Poll on NineMSN:

Vote: Would you want Alexander Downer to be your mayor? Yes-29167, No-48796.

[Gingernuts]

Poll on NineMSN:

Vote: Would you want Alexander Downer to be your mayor? Yes-29167, No-48796.

Crickey, that swung. It was the opposite yesterday afternoon.

[Jimmy_041]

Poll on NineMSN:

Vote: Would you want Alexander Downer to be your mayor? Yes-29167, No-48796.

Crickey, that swung. It was the opposite yesterday afternoon.

Obviously the Labor poll manipulators outnumbered the Liberal ones - I dont know why anyone would bother - that's 78,000 and it means nothing.