anthonybaxter

Remember this morning's post? clemnewtonbrown was going to attempt to engage wif da kids by using things like a blog. Ooo. Let's have a look, shall we? According to the slightly dodgy paper mail (more later on this) I received, it's at http://clemnb.typepad.com/. There was even a special little full-colour leaflet promoting this site.

First thoughts - ugh. That's only ugly-arse site. Hire someone who understands CSS, for the love of god!

There's no datestamps on any posts. I wonder why - ah. If you dig in a bit you can get the permalinks for the posts. You're looking at no more than a couple of posts a month. So much for the welcome message of "what will follow is a diary of an election campaign from the perspective of a candidate trying to win a seat in the Victorian State Parliament."

Secondly, let's look at the content. As far as I can see, nearly all of the posts are just dumps of various local issues clem has been harping on about. Once again, I note that things like Prahran Pool and parking meters are council issues. It's nice that you care about this, but it's not relevant to the election!

Basically, the content is the same collection of crap you'd see if you read his campaign literature. That's pretty much it. So much for all that. I hope he got a cheap printing rate for the publishing of the leaflets promoting it.

And is it just me, or is the idea of someone who's so mad keen on cycling (including suggesting putting bike lanes on Chapel St, for fuck's sake!) running for the Liberal Party slightly odd? This is the pro-speeding Liberal Party. How exactly is encouraging people to drive faster a good thing for cyclists?

There's a piece in there complaining about the state of local schools in the Prahran area. He touts what the Liberal party will do for schools. I hate to burst your bubble, but a lot of us can remember what the Liberals did to the schools last time they held government here. To put it simply - they fucked them. Underfunded them, closed many, and generally made a hash of it. But I'm sure that under a Baillieu government, they'd be better this time. I mean, it's not like Ted's going to listen to his mentor Jeffrey Gibb Kennett, is it?

I should close off by noting that based on what clem cares about (his bio lists a bunch of volunteer work) he's probably not a bad human being. But he made the choice to stand as a Liberal. Those scumbags totally fucked the state over last time the were in power, and they haven't shown any indications that they've learned otherwise. Last I looked, the state party was still firmly on the side of global warming denial. And their policies seem rather slanted towards the cheap populist stunts that appeal to the letters page of the Herald-Sun. In addition, I'm finding his rather tragic attempts to appear hip and online somewhere between hilarious and irritatingly patronising. There's politicians who blog, and who make a half-decent effort at it. clemnewtonbrown isn't one of them.

Christ. One day into the official campaign, and Baillieu already looks like an idiot. In this case, during an interview he attempted to pass off bracksbrokenpromises.com.au as some sort of independent thing.
Pity about the domain being registered by the Victorian Liberals and the website featuring a tagline saying "Authorised by" the state director of the Liberal Party. Even more of a pity for Baillieu, during an interview with 3AW's Neil Mitchell, Mitchell knew this, and made Ted look like a shifty little doofus. The transcript's on the Age politics blog.

In this case the people responsible actually authorised the site correctly. I'd not be at all suprised to see dodgy attempts at negative sites "anonymously" popping up. If you see something dodgy, don't forget to check the 'whois' entry for the domain to see who registered it. There's plenty of web-based interfaces for this - for instance, this one.

Wow. Liberal candidate "clem newton-brown" (as he shall be known from now on) is right there wif da kids. he's posted a movie to youtube explaining why you should vote for him as a local councillor. unfortunately, he's running for state parliment.

Mary Bolling has the video, and more.

You should be warned in advance, though - this video features background music that will cause your brain to bleed from the ears.