Bolt boots Rudd, News follows

Following Andrew. Yesterday the News tabloid columnist Andrew Bolt warned his readers that one disillusioned day they would hear from many who now work with the Prime Minister that how Rudd seems is bizarrely different to how he is. “I don’t just mean that this publicly prissy churchgoer is privately a foul-mouthed, arrogant, paranoid and abusive control freak,” said the column, “but that many of his brightest ideas swiftly flop.”

This morning those very same tabloids did not wait for staffers to deliver their verdict but put the boot in themselves. Alongside a photo of a very sour-faced Kevin Rudd were details of the very high staff turnover in the offices of the Prime Minister and other ministers.

The aim clearly was to confirm the Boltian message about Kevin Rudd not really being a nice kind of bloke but I’m not sure that the end result won’t be too increase his support among voters rather than lower it. There’s not much public sympathy for public servants be they ones that work on the private staff of ministers or in government departments. The idea that they are made to work extremely hard is more likely to be applauded than condemned.

How tweet it is. All those lovely little tweets are now to be preserved for posterity. The US Library of Congress overnight sent out this message:

Among the beneficiaries of the new archiving policy will be Queensland Premier  Anna Bligh who has become an inveterate twitterer. Yesterday she re-opened that perennial debate up north about day light saving with some well chosen words to her followers the produced this glowing welcome from the Gold Coast Bulletin where they clearly find it inconvenient to spend half a year 100 years and an hour behind New South Wales.

In case you missed it. An interesting read in The Australian this morning assuming the facts are right. David Biles, a consultant criminologist who was head of research with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, reminded his readers that it is still the case that non-Aboriginal prisoners are more likely to die than Aboriginal prisoners. In a piece entitled Aborigines less likely to die in prison than others he touches on what was apparently a matter of some debate within the Royal Commission at the time. I doubt that I am the only person who thought that Aborigines were more likely to die in custody than other groups.

Itchyworms and sugarfree. Tie a yellow ribbon and call in the bands. There are some novel campaign methods in the Philippines election campaign that is now in full swing. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports this morning that in the homestretch of the presidential election, front-runner Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III will tie yellow ribbons around the country during a nonstop 17-day concert caravan aimed at binding the youth vote. Concerts are expected to draw the youth to the streets and join popular bands and musicians like Parokya ni Edgar, Kamikazee, Spongecola, Hale, Moonstar88, Itchyworms, Sugarfree and Noel Cabangon and other celebrities as part of the campaign proceedings.

Gotta love the AHA. You have to hand it to the Australian Hotels Association. They are a lobby group without peer with an amazing capacity to turn black into white. There was their spokeswoman on Sydney television the other night bemoaning the inaccuracy of crime figures collected by the police and saying how no notice could be taken of data showing the enormity of the drunken violence problem. And she said it with a completely serious straight face even though the whole point of the criticism of the police figures is that they understate such problems as street violence caused by patrons of AHA establishments.